Gillian Sudlow
Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century ...

In Part I of this post, [Dr. Thomas Carey] offered reflections on the discussion paper Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce prepared for Fall 2024 consultations led by the Government of Canada’s Minister of Workplace Development. Those reflections were based on our experiences in the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada, fostering collaborations with workplace and higher education partners to advance employee-led innovation in Canada.

This follow-up post complements those previous reflections with insights specific to another emerging focal point for our current collaborations within Canada and beyond: Developing a distinctive role for Canada in Workplace Innovation Skills for Industry 5.0.

Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce (Part II—Industry 5.0)
Gillian Sudlow
Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century ...

In this three-part post, [Dr. Thomas Carey offers his] reflections on the discussion paper Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce prepared for Fall 2024 consultations led by the Government of Canada’s Minister of Workplace Development. These reflections are based on experiences by our team within the Workplace Innovation Network for Canada, around our mission to foster collaborations with workplace and higher education partners to advance employee-led innovation in Canadian workplaces.

Reflections on Building a Modern 21st Century Workforce (Part I)
Gillian Sudlow
Helping Students Develop the Communication ...

In this post, Rob Danisch, Communication Studies Professor at the University of Waterloo, reflects on the importance of focusing on teaching creative and critical thinking skills to help students become innovation catalysts …

In my case, I’m a Professor of Communication Studies. This means that my classes focus on the kinds of communication practices that can foster or catalyze innovation. It’s not music we are learning to play, at least not necessarily; we are learning an embodied knowledge about our everyday habits of interaction. And I’ve long wanted to teach the embodied communication practices most helpful for creating a culture of learning and catalyzing innovation.

Helping Students Develop the Communication Skills They Need to Be Innovation Catalysts
Gillian Sudlow
Resources for Building a Sustainable ...

Our WINCan team was delighted to be invited to present our current work at the October conference of the EU’s Workplace Innovation Network on The Future of Work. The focus of the presentation was our recent progress on establishing a sustainable Professional Community for Workplace Innovation Catalysts in the Windsor-Essex region, including the larger plan to integrate workplace innovation as a key enabling element in the region’s Innovation Ecosystem.

Resources for Building a Sustainable Professional Community for Workplace Innovation Catalysts
Gillian Sudlow
Case Stories of Workplace Innovation for ...

In Part I of this post, we provided an overview of a WINCan project with our summer research intern – Kyla, an undergrad in the Integrated Sciences program at McMaster University. The aim was to assess the feasibility of creating  case stories to illustrate workplace innovation activities that would be of specific interest to Science students. The previous post discusses source material for illustrative case stories for two of the innovation activities – Job Crafting and Innovation Adaptation – in our adaptable learning resources for Understanding and Applying Workplace Innovation.  

We follow up in this post with illustrative case story sources for Design Thinking and Intrapreneurship. We also describe a potential practice case story with which students could engage as a test of their understanding, based on a Design Thinking experiment to improve a biochemistry lab course at McMaster.

Case Stories of Workplace Innovation for Science Students – Part II

Project Launch for Beyond the Champion – Strategic Innovation in Higher Education

Project Launch for Beyond the Champion – Strategic Innovation in Higher Education

In a January post, we described a proposed project to adapt recent insights from the corporate sector into our higher education context to allow us to systematically sustain strategic innovation in higher education. We’re happy to announce that we have now “officially” launched this project, with an initial case study from Ontario and other institutions in the loop with strong interest expressed in becoming case study institutions and a project schedule from mid-May through December 2020.

This post has a more academic tone than most of our What We’re Learning posts from WINCan projects – complete with footnotes and the traditional academic note about “more research will be needed…” ! That’s because we wrote it as a chapter abstract proposed for a forthcoming volume in the book series Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning.

Three Key Ideas for Integrating Interdisciplinary Ways of Knowing in Workplace Innovation

Three Key Ideas for Integrating Interdisciplinary Ways of Knowing in Workplace Innovation

In this post, Tom and the Melbourne team leaders (Felix, Sarah and Vicki) share some of their key ideas:

  • Students can engage with Workplace Innovation examples and issues in teaching and learning experiences from multiple disciplinary areas of study.

  • Work-Integrated Learning opportunities in Human-Centred Workplace Innovation can support students in integrating their disciplinary ways of knowing into their innovation capability.

Three New WINCan-related Initiatives Brewing in Ontario – part II

Three New WINCan-related Initiatives Brewing in Ontario – part II

Tom and Anahita summarize our other 2020 WINCan initiatives in Ontario:

  • Collaborating with small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) to mobilize research on developing Human-Centred Workplace Innovation within their workforces

  • Leading a Green Paper study on new across-the-curriculum learning outcomes in higher education to better prepare graduates for the Future of Work.

Introducing Our New WINCan-related Initiative in Australia

Introducing Our New WINCan-related Initiative in Australia

Monash University – Australia’s largest – is adapting ideas and insights from WINCan’s Canadian work as a strategic initiative within the Faculty of Arts. Their goal is to develop capability for B.A. graduates to contribute distinctive value in current and future workplaces – capabilities that leverage the disciplinary Ways of Knowing from Humanities, Social Sciences and Performing Arts disciplines and also contribute distinctive value in graduates’ other roles as community members and global citizens.

Co-Developing Capability Specification, Curriculum Maps and Learning Activities

Co-Developing Capability Specification, Curriculum Maps and Learning Activities

Many of our WINCan project teams are exploring how we can best collaborate with workplace partners on co-development of Specification, Curriculum and Learning Activities for Capability in Workplace Innovation. One of the deliverables in our 2020-22 work plan is an initial Capability specification, which will no doubt evolve further over time.

In  this post we’ll review some of the starting points we’re using to get going on these academic-workplace  collaborations, on both the Competencies expected – to contribute effectively to innovation in the workplace – and the underlying Capability required to make those contributions (in the workplace and in our graduates' other roles as community members and global citizens).

Reflections on Knowledge Management & Workplace Innovation

Reflections on Knowledge Management & Workplace Innovation

In previous posts, Blake and Allison described the initial concepts in our pilot course on Knowledge Management and Workplace Innovation, some of the issues and insights from course learning activities and the Design Challenge provided by WINCan’s workplace partners at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. In this final post in the series, two workplace learners from the course reflect on their experiences, followed by reflections from Allison and Blake on one aspect of their ‘learning to be surprised’ experience as facilitators.

Adapting Learning Resources across Higher Ed and Workplace

Adapting Learning Resources across Higher Ed and Workplace

In this post Co-Principal Catalyst, Thomas Carey, and President of EJP Communications, Eleanor Pierre, outline the resulting Adaptable Learning Design Model and some of the key elements being tested with our current prototype Learning Resources to develop workplace innovation capability in different contexts.

Needed Now: A Revaluing of HASS Education

Needed Now: A Revaluing of HASS Education

In this post in the Australian daily higher education news update, Senior Lecturer for Queensland University’s Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, Dr. Deanne Gannaway urges Australia’s post-secondary educators to reconsider the value of Humanities and Social Science (HASS) Education. Deanne is an Associate Professor in the University of Queensland's Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation and leads their partnership with WINCan.

CMHC Design Challenge

CMHC Design Challenge

In this comprehensive post co-authored by WINCan’s Co-principal Catalyst and Workplace Team Lead, Blake Melnick and Programs Director, Allison Davies, Melnick and Davies outline the Knowledge Management Institute’s six week intensive CMHC Design Innovation Challenge. The objective was for students to come up with innovative solutions to ensuring that every person in Canada should have access to a home that meets their individual or familial needs for less than 30% of their income by the year 2030.

Job Crafting for Industry 4.0 Is Employee-Driven Innovation

Job Crafting for Industry 4.0 Is Employee-Driven Innovation

We hear on a regular basis from our workplace partners that our graduates will need to adapt to Jobs of the Future by working with knowledge that doesn’t yet exist, using knowledge practices and formats that don’t yet exist, in work roles and structures that don’t yet exist. How can we help learners to develop the capabilities needed in order to engage with, make adaptations to and even lead the way on the changes that we can’t yet anticipate?

Design Thinking versus User-Centred Design

Design Thinking versus User-Centred Design

In this post, Karel Vredenberg, Director of Global Academic Programs in IBM’s Design Program Office and Head of IBM Studios Canada, explains how he sees Design Thinking and User-Centred Design not as competing, but rather “integrally linked” frameworks. He goes further to claim that for Design Thinking to be used properly, elements of User-Centred Design should be included as exemplified by IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking.

How Can Professional Scale Design Thinking Shape Learning Experiences in Secondary Schools?

How Can Professional Scale Design Thinking Shape Learning Experiences in Secondary Schools?

In this post from WINCan media specialist Joel Dmitruk, we’ll analyze a leading-edge professional model to identify the similarities and differences with approaches in secondary schools outlined in our previous post. Where have teachers had to make trade-offs?  What lessons can we draw about Design Thinking (DT) in secondary schools as scaffolds toward exemplary professional DT?

Developing and Transferring Design Thinking Capability: an in-course Work-Integrated Learning with a First Nations Sustainable Farm School

Developing and Transferring Design Thinking Capability: an in-course Work-Integrated Learning with a First Nations Sustainable Farm School

NationTalk, an Indigenous newswire service,  posted this news item about an in-course Work-Integrated Learning project with Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Richmond BC), the Tsawwassen First Nation Farm School (Tsawwassen BC) and IBM Canada’s Design Studio (Markham ON).

KM and Workplace Innovation: a pilot course

KM and Workplace Innovation: a pilot course

WINCan’s Co-Principal Catalyst and Workplace Partners Lead, Blake Melnick and Programs Coordinator, Allison Davies begin this post by describing the key elements of innovation capability. They continue with a description of a prototype program of how to foster these elements by treating the “Classroom as a Workplace.”

Academic-Workplace Collaboration to Develop Workplace Innovation Capability: A Design Thinking Example

Academic-Workplace Collaboration to Develop Workplace Innovation Capability: A Design Thinking Example

In this post, Tom Carey and Design instructor  Iryna Karaush explain the instructional design and rationale for a pilot course to integrate concepts of Employee-Driven Workplace Innovation into a Design Thinking course. We wanted  to see how existing pedagogies for Design Thinking might be extended to situate Design Thinking in a broader workplace context and to build  an understanding of the multiple roles which employees might undertake in a Design Thinking project.

Demonstrating the Capabilities of B.A. Graduates Through Workplace Innovation

Demonstrating the Capabilities of B.A. Graduates Through Workplace Innovation

In this post, Tom Carey and Deanne Gannaway highlight five reasons why BA graduates make ideal candidates for workplace innovation. The skills they learn and practice through their coursework provide a critical lens through which to view workplace challenges and inspire new ideas and ways of doing. This post also introduces two of the Heroes of Humanities cards which will be highlighted in future posts.