Assessing an effective collaboration in higher education: A study of students’ experiences and challenges on group collaboration

Studies emphasize that collaboration remains an essential part of learning and working in the 21st century. This study seeks to report on the group collaboration of higher education students. Using Explanatory sequential mixed method design, this study tried to discuss the students’ experiences and challenges on group collaboration environment in the online learning cases. Adopting Razmerita and Kirchner's (2014) questionnaire, 287 students involved in this study. The result indicated that overall students performed positive perception on group collaboration. In addition, to have deep analysis, 15 students were interviewed. This study contributes to an understanding of how students perceived collaboration and how they explain the obstacles recognized in their classes.DOI: 10.26905/enjourme.v6i2.6971

Application of 4D BIM in Construction Industry: Challenges and Suggestions

Construction industry is believed to be one of the most criticized industries worldwide. During the last two decades, this criticism has denoted a lot of problems. Without disregarding any of the industry problems, it seems that the most criticized problems are low delivery performance, lack of innovation, lack of collaboration and fragmented nature of the industry. To overcome these problems, a collaborative work environment is needed. During the last few years, the use of advanced information technologies in construction hasincreased to support the industry requirement of collaboration environment. Keywords: Building Information Modeling BIM, BIMimplementation, BIM Barriers

Addressing Collaboration Challenges in Project-Based Learning: The Student’s Perspective

Project-based learning has been explored in a variety of contexts and different phases of education. Several implementation challenges are associated with project-based learning. Among these challenges is ensuring collaboration between students enrolled in a project assignment. The purpose of this study was to present several practical insights on how to tackle collaboration challenges in project-based learning. The study is based on the qualitative analysis of 67 reflections reports submitted by students who were enrolled in a project-based learning assignment in engineering education. The results suggest that collaboration challenges can be traced to priority conflicts between students as well as to the uncertainty in the project assignment. The results further suggest that these challenges can be successfully addressed by applying a structured project-management approach to planning, communication, and follow up. In addition, the findings suggest this structured approached should be supported by a mindset that recognizes the importance of adaptations and flexibility as the project develops. Moreover, the findings suggest that a collaboration environment based on inclusion, openness, and support enables students to respond to emerging problems and disagreements. The paper outlines several recommendations on how to improve students’ collaboration ability within project teams in the context of project-based assignments.

The effect of intellectual property treaties on international innovation collaboration: a study based on USPTO patents during 1976–2017

PurposeStudies have indicated that international innovation collaboration has promoted technology transfer and knowledge spillover between countries. The conclusion of various international intellectual property (IP) treaties has played an essential role in optimizing the international innovation and collaboration environment. This study investigates the effect of IP treaties on international innovation collaboration and whether international IP treaties can promote collaboration between a country and other economies in the world.Design/methodology/approachAfter collecting and extracting the patent record data from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), a final dataset of 3,213,626 cooperative patents and 465,236 pairs of collaborations between two countries or regions is established. Based on the international patent collaboration data of 192 countries during 1976–2017, the changes in patent collaboration indicators after these countries joined 23 IP treaties are analyzed.FindingsInternational IP treaties have significantly increased the number of patent cooperation countries of a country and its importance in international cooperation networks. The role of IP treaties is more manifested by the increased opportunities for a country's international innovation cooperation than its influence on global innovation; this is of extreme significance for developing countries to introduce advanced technologies.Originality/valueGinarte and Park (1997) have confirmed that IP treaties have helped to raise the level of IP protection. In this study, the increase in the degree centrality of the international innovation network is evidence of IP treaties to promote innovation cooperation. For a developing country, joining an intellectual property treaty may strengthen intellectual property protection and optimize its own international innovation cooperation methods.

The Impact of the Strategic Interests and Communicative Actions between the Socially Responsible Entrepreneurial Universities and University - Industry Collaboration Ecosystem

There is a natural harmony between the organizations’ stakeholders and corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. The roles of socially responsible entrepreneurial universities have become more important among many organizational structures that produce solutions to global social problems and transnational challenges. Recently, the UIC interface structures within the socially responsible entrepreneurial universities have ensured effective communication with stakeholders in the UIC ecosystem due to the strategic collaborative projects. Furthermore, the effective communication they provide strengthens trust and reciprocal understanding among organizations, creates a harmonious collaboration environment, and develops a more efficient understanding of partnership. The purpose of this study is to examine the attributes and operations of the UIC structures functioning in socially responsible entrepreneurial universities and explore the CSR-related projects potentials and project management culture of these structures with their stakeholders. In this context, the CSR-related communications and actions with the companies that are actively working in Technoparks, which are among the UIC interfaces, were examined by taking into account the nexus between the stakeholders, companies, and the UIC interfaces. In this study, case study research and content analysis were applied in terms of methodology.

Assessment of Research Collaborations for Improving Intellectual and Economic Performance in Public Renewable Energy R&D

Public R&D investment in renewable energy has burgeoned at the global level in a concerted effort to expedite energy transition. Unlike traditional energy sources, the renewable energy industry produces a favorable collaboration environment for small and medium enterprises, affecting traits of R&D collaboration in R&D as well. The main purpose of this study is to find relationships between R&D collaboration and intellectual & economic performances in renewable energy R&D. We have analyzed 484 projects completed between 2006 and 2014 in South Korea’s public renewable energy R&D program. We found that university-industry-government research institute collaboration is not the most effective for creating intellectual nor economic performance, interpreting as a necessity in the revision on current UIG collaboration policy. For a leader organization, we found that medium enterprises are the most positively related with economic outcomes, interpreting medium enterprises had as much technical competency and investment capacity as large enterprises. Keywords: R&D, performance measurement, collaboration, renewable energy, triple helix, r&d leader

Evaluation and Development of Digital Collaboration Techniques for Interdisciplinary Collaboration

In innovative industrial companies, collaboration techniques and laboratories have been in use for years. What historically started with teleconferencing instead of business trips has now reached the status of normal tools for interdisciplinary cooperation in these companies with advances in technologies such as PCs and data broadband as well as software such as Computer Aided Design (CAD), Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). But the collaboration techniques are often installed in extra rooms, e.g. video conferencing facilities and large VR laboratories. Other technologies such as chat programs can be used by any employee directly at his workplace. Without the use of these techniques, the short development times required today in many industrial sectors cannot be achieved and even remote maintenance of machines at the customer’s would be impossible for machine manufacturers. Within a research project, digital collaboration techniques are inspected and evaluated regarding their suitability for interdisciplinary cooperation in various applications. Collaboration techniques include special hardware for graphic simulations and head-mounted displays for 360∘ visualization of digital objects. Additionally different software for cooperation with graphics, video and conference programs distributed over several locations is tested, evaluated and partly newly developed. The application cases are processes from engineering and for planning of buildings. Based on the requirements determined during the tests, a new user-friendly mobile collaboration environment was developed. This collaboration environment integrates the different technologies of graphic simulation as well as already established methods such as video transmission or video conferencing and chat programs in a suitcase system.