Knowledge, both tacit and explicit, has become a valuable commodity for any organisation's survival and competitive advantage within the age of the fourth industrial revolution. The organisational culture within HEIs, however, can be quite hierarchical, highly individualistic, and self-directed, with the focus for advancement being the main driver on research and publishing. HE in the UK has undergone a series of transformations over the years, with the duality of HE abolished in 1992, and a single system for Technikons and Universities being introduced. The way in which teaching and research were being evaluated changed to include the REF, and lecturers required to evidence being able to teach by undertaking a PGCE recognised by the HEA. The administrators were advised to treat students as “customers,” contentious words, as student satisfaction became another measure to evaluate higher education institutions. This chapter introduces knowledge cafés as vehicles for knowledge sharing among academics.
TopIntroduction
The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), the Digital Age, refers to the development of technology from analog automated and mechanical devices to the digital technologies accessible today, and technology advances in miniaturization, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and telecommunications typifies this age (Smith & Crespo-Dubie, 2018). The 4IR has a caused a technological trigger, which has transformed ways of working, playing, and living. Technology has become embedded within civilisations (Smith & Crespo-Dubie, 2018), and the world has become more connected. This enhanced technological connectedness, however, affords opportunities and challenges.
A social trigger—the COVID-19 pandemic —and the subsequent lockdown imposed by governments across the world, created further challenges, which has also drastically transformed the way we are able to work and socialise. However, the lockdown has also offered some opportunities for reflection of best teaching practice. When the lockdown was imposed, academic staff were tasked with immediately delivering their lectures online, which may or may not have been fit for online delivery, hence, requiring substantial work to make this transformation a possibility. Additionally, academic staff, were not all au faux or comfortable with using technology in this way, and hence, had to quickly adapt and learn what they needed to know to be able to continue to deliver their curriculum using the new platform. Besides the demand for academic staff to immediately and entirely transform their curricular instruction, the fear of the loss of employment, housing environment, unexpected care-taking demands, the invisibility of students and the related teaching challenges, all placed additional demands on staff and created an unprecedented set of factors that were not dealt with before (Neuwirth, Jovi, & Mukherji, 2021).
Over the years, Higher Education in the UK, in general, have faced untold pressure, with increasing student demands, reduced funding, constant pressure for research and teaching excellence, and a renewed focus on student satisfaction. Innovative strategies to transform within the classroom has become paramount for Higher Education Institutions survival, and the lockdown has forced Higher Education to rethink the way in which education is delivered. To rethink educational delivery and reimagine Higher Education requires innovation, co-creation and sharing of best practices. Research suggests that organisations driven by an innovative culture often can outperform competitors (Neuwirth et al., 2021). Research also suggests that engaging in knowledge sharing activities can improve innovative outcomes and hence, the next section will introduce Knowledge Management and Knowledge Sharing, focusing on the background of Higher Education in the UK, addressing the changing demands on Higher education, the culture and context of Higher Education, Knowledge Sharing practices and challenges within HEI, in particular presenting a particular example of knowledge sharing using a ‘Knowledge Café’ as a sharing mechanism within a HEI, and finally the chapter ends with some concluding comments.