Knowledge Innovation Centre
Who are we?
The Knowledge Innovation Centre is a dynamic consultancy focusing on knowledge brokerage and innovation of knowledge transfer processes. The Centre brings together a variety of local and European experts from diverse fields and has worked extensively within Quality Assurance of Higher Education, Technology Enhanced Learning, Student Services and knowledge economy (as it relates to the Lisbon Agenda and Barcelona Process). The Centre has forged close relationships with a number of stakeholders in the regional innovation and Higher Education fields and is active in leveraging such relationships to build multi-disciplinary, multi-country networks for knowledge transfer and capitalisation.
The Centre also offers a variety of online solutions geared at maximising quality assurance mechanisms, public relations and services. KIC has been involved in over 20 research projects in the last decade and specialises in knowledge transfer of educational policy projects. As such, it serves as a technical-support partner for all matters linked to web-development and design, as a community coordinator for social activities, and as a communications consultant for all dissemination and exploitation-linked activities. In each case, it translates project results into digestible outputs and getting them into the hands of the appropriate target groups be they students, educational researchers, institutional leaders or policymakers.
Why we are Participating in the Project
KIC is a partner specialised in knowledge transfer of educational policy projects. As such, it serves as a technical-support partner for all matters linked to web-development and design, as a community coordinator for social activities, and as a communications consultant for all dissemination and exploitation-linked activities. The Centre has provided dissemination & exploitation services to around 10 Erasmus+ projects in recent years, including PHExcel, Eduhack, OEPass, Multinclude, Apprentice Track and MicroHE to name a few. In each case, it specialises in translating project results into digestible outputs and getting them into the hands of the appropriate target groups be they students, educational researchers, institutional leaders or policy makers.
Our Role in the Project
Amongst other sectoral activities and relevant expert consultations KIC has been putting great effort in projects that focus on increasing the accessibility to higher education and portability of (open) learning credentials (OEPass and MicroHE), and on connecting the worlds of policy making, education and work (PROCSEE). KIC’s involvement in their past and current projects contribute directly to the advancement of the Lisbon Agenda and Barcelona Process and to increasing the transparency and quality assurance of educational services. KIC also always pays attention to sustaining and further developing products and services of their former work and collaborate with, inspire, and be inspired by, sister EU projects to the benefit of the wider European educational community. Because the project will build on the results and lessons of OEPass, MicroHE and Eduhack, and also rely on collaboration with an extended community of practice whose members have been collaborators of KIC for years, the Centre’s involvement in the project will be pivotal.
Our Team
Nik Heerens
Nik has been working in the field of higher education for the last 20 years, mostly related to the Bologna Process, Quality Assurance, students’ engagement and regional development. He has been director of the European Students’ Union, head of sparqs (student partnerships in quality Scotland) and held senior management positions at overseas development organisations SPARK in the Netherlands and Signal in the UK. Nik is currently holding a position as research & development associate at KIC where he mainly focuses on projects related to Quality Assurance, work-place learning and social inclusion.
Carmen L. Padrón Nápoles
Carmen has got a degree in Computer Engineering from Superior Polytechnic Institute José A. Echeverría, Havana, Cuba and Ph. D. in Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence applied to eLearning) from the University Carlos III de Madrid, Spain.
She has more than 15 years of research, development and innovation experience related to technological support for education and learning in areas like Game-based learning, Personalization, Learning Analytics, Usability and Formal models for knowledge representation and Emerging technologies deployment impact on learning practices. She worked in ATOS Research and Innovation as Head of the User Experience Research Line and Manager of the Technology Enhanced Learning Area, leading research activities and managing EU co-funded projects until May 2018.
Anthony Camilleri
Anthony’s expertise are Quality Assurance processes and knowledge transfer of research. Within Quality Assurance he has given training on techniques for peer-review to quality assurance agencies around Europe, and contributed to the UNIQUe and ECBCheck guidelines on quality assurance of e-learning. With respect to knowledge transfer, he has worked with several associations to better describe their research outcomes through their communication channels, included through improved and more targeted web presence, better social media handling and production of final publications, including most recently OERTest and EQUNET. He has also developed a methodology for improving impact measurement of dissemination and exploitation activities within EU projects. Anthony was previously engaged as Quality Services Manager for EFQUEL, where he was responsible for coordination of projects linked to OER including OERTest and VMPass.
