Robert Danisch and Felix Nobis
The first post in this three-part series described our set of shared online learning resources that help students to develop their capability for Workplace Innovation. These resources have been created, adapted and enhanced by instructors at a diverse set of post-secondary institutions, each with their own specific context. In this second part of the series, four of those instructors summarize some aspects of their context, and outline one distinctive aspect of their instructional approach – topical theme, instructional format, host disciplinary program area, etc.
The first two of these instructors (Christina Page and Linda Pardy) share a common interest in Inclusive Workplace Innovation and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs); the second pair of instructors (Robert Danisch and Felix Nobis) share a common interest in helping their students in Applying Discipline Expertise to Advance Workplace Innovation. The distinctive approaches of each instructor highlight some of the ways that their diverse contexts – and their own distinctive contributions – have produced a diverse set of innovative solutions.
Inclusive Workplace Innovation and the Sustainable Development Goals
Inclusive Innovation in an Intercultural Engagement course (Christina Page, Kwantlen Polytechnic University,
Canada)
Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) has five campuses in British Columbia’s lower mainland, offering a diverse range of degree, diploma, and certificate programs.
Our Business Management Diploma includes a second-year Intercultural Engagement course. The course is also open as an elective in all programs, with diverse cohorts of both international and domestic students, most working outside of school. The course guides students through a journey of personal and professional development as they apply principles from Intercultural, Equity-Diversity-Inclusion and Indigenization perspectives.
Two Workplace Innovation learning resources are linked to core learning activities and assessments.
Job Crafting content from Understanding Workplace Innovation has been integrated into the open course textbook. After completing this content, students will create a Job Crafting plan that incorporates personal, culturally influenced values to support their workplace performance and quality of work life.
Content from the Enabling Inclusive Innovation open educational resource (OER) is embedded within the Capstone project. Within this project, students are invited to extend their engagement with Inclusive Innovation by integrating it with prior learning on either the UNSDGs or strategies for fostering workplace inclusion. After selecting a Capstone focus, students apply Inclusive Innovation principles to the design of a small-scale workplace innovation aimed at advancing one or more UNSDGs or contributing to an identified workplace inclusion goal.
Contact: Christina Page (christina.page@kpu.ca)
Core Courses on Inclusive Workplace Innovation for a Social Innovation Certificate (Linda Pardy, University of the Fraser Valley, Canada)
The University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) is a regional university with multiple campuses in cities east of the greater Vancouver area of British Columbia. We are launching a Social Innovation Certificate in Fall 2025. The certificate is designed to foster the social innovation capacities of students, which they can then integrate into their various disciplinary areas or take as a standalone credential. Students will develop capability in changemaking and inclusive workplace innovation, while bringing expertise and perspectives from their individual disciplinary areas or experiences.
The certificate includes a sequence of four new Social Innovation (INNV) courses (12 credits in all) as the core of the certificate, along with a minimum of 15 credits from selected interdisciplinary elective courses. UFV is aiming to draw from and contribute to the shared OER in inclusive workplace innovation for each of the four INNV courses. INNV 100 introduces foundational principles, mindsets, innovation skills, explains Job Crafting, and includes various problem-solving approaches and basic systems thinking from multiple perspectives.
INNV 200 delves deeper into Job Crafting, social innovation approaches, and integrating perspectives from Indigenous contexts. INNV 300 and INNV 400 shift into more complex innovation projects using Curricular Work Integrated Learning (WIL) strategies in collaboration with regional community partners and employers, ensuring students engage with innovation for social goals and get hands-on work experience to equip them as agents of innovation.
Contact: Linda Pardy (linda.pardy@ufv.ca)
Applying Discipline Expertise to Advance Workplace Innovation
Communication Arts Design Innovation Project: Innovation Utopia (Robert Danisch, University of Waterloo, Canada)
The University of Waterloo is home to a unique “Arts and Business” program that combines traditional humanities or social science academic work with a sequence of business courses. Students often complete three co-op terms over the course of their undergraduate academic career. These students often demonstrate interest in developing skills that reach across their varied disciplinary interests and were drawn to a course on workplace innovation for its potential application in both their cop-op terms and future careers.
For their final Design Innovation project in our Workplace Innovation course, co-op students in Communication Arts designed an Innovation Utopia – a place people would love to work. This Utopia had suggestions and rules governing how communication would take place to foster employee-led innovation. The rules were based on research insights from the field of Communication Studies. The aim of the communications structure was to promote growth in specific aspects of innovation – learning, adaptation, and capability – within the organization.
Students were expected to explain how their proposed Design Innovation structure achieved these goals and why they chose it. This was a creative/imaginative assignment that tested far more than students’ epistemic knowledge; it also tested their “know-how.” The students were encouraged to follow up via evaluating their own places of co-op employment along the standards they set out for their Innovation Utopia.
Contact: Robert Danisch (rdanisch@uwaterloo.ca)
Adapting Workplace Innovation Resources for Theatre and Performance Students (Felix Nobis, Monash University, Australia)
We have made numerous adjustments and enhancements in our Monash course unit on Workplace Innovation since its first Calendar offering in 2021. The initial course has been continuously refined and is currently offered as a 6-week self-paced unit. In 2025, this course has 260 enrolments.
As my own responsibilities as a staff member have shifted from the Faculty of Arts level back to my home discipline, I am now researching an adaptation of the OER for students in Theatre and Performance. This would help them to explore how the capabilities and ways of thinking/knowing developed in their Theatre studies can create distinctive value in workplace innovation projects.
I intend for such a profession-specific investigation to be of benefit in helping students to understand how their professional capabilities have many applications in career paths which they might not have otherwise envisioned.
Some of this research is based on my own experience of relating teaching in Workplace Innovation to my experiences as a professional actor and vice versa. I am interested in the resonances between innovation and theatrical concepts and ‘ways of knowing’. The work of other scholars in Theatre and Performance is also contributing in novel ways, including the links between Design Thinking and Improvisational techniques[1], innovation leadership techniques based on insights of theatre[2] and film directors, and parallels between Narrative work[3] in Theatre and Persona Scenarios for prototyping innovation designs and pitching innovation projects.
Contact: Felix Nobis (felix.nobis@monash.edu)
Note: Part III of this series contains case story summaries from four additional instructors, paired up by common interests in Linking Course Learning Outcomes to Workplace Practice (for both traditional and working learners) and Workplace Innovation Capability in Work-Integrated Learning.
Acknowledgement: in addition to the support of participating institutional partners, elements of the work reported here were supported by the eCampus Ontario Open Library program and the Government of Canada’s Future Skills Program.
References:
[1] Sirkin, D., Mok, B., Yang, S., Maheshwari, R., & Ju, W. (2016). Improving design thinking through collaborative improvisation. Design Thinking Research: Making Design Thinking Foundational, Cham: Springer International Publishing. 93-108.
[2] Rixhon, P. (2008). Innovation leadership: Best practices from theatre creators. 2008. Führung, Innovation und Wandel. Düsseldorf: Symposion, 197-216.
[3] Hayama, Y. (2024). Design narratives as worldmaking for innovation: the discursive mechanism of interpretation and sensemaking for the coevolution of problem and solution. Ph.D. thesis, Politecnico di Milano – Department of Design. Feb 2024.