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 has a strong interest, and significant experience, in providing a variety of training and support resources geared at maximising the effectiveness of Quality Assurance mechanisms in higher and vocational education. Having been involved with many topically relevant EU projects in the past, KIC strives to sustain and capitalise on their know-how.
Our aim with QA Lead is to complement previous work done, by approaching this subject from the perspective of institutional leadership which is critical to the success of any system of Quality Assurance and Quality Management.
Our Role in the Project
At the QA Lead project KIC will collaborate with the partners in the development of all intellectual outputs and will in particular take the lead in developing the structure of the training as well as authoring the initial training materials in the form of a QA Manual for institutional leaders (IO1). Across the project KIC will also be responsible for the internal and external communication, including the networking strategy and dissemination planning.
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.
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.