期刊名称：Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology
印刷版ISSN：1547-5840
电子版ISSN：1547-5867
出版年度：2011
卷号：8
出版社：Informing Science Institute
摘要：This paper starts with a presentation of experiences from a joint project where courses in infor-matics have been developed together with industry partners. The industry partners were of vari-ous size. Some of them were producers of for example cars and aero planes and also making Technical documentation for their products, while other companies were subcontractors for the Technical Communication. A problem that occurs in the Technical Communication sector is that companies have big problems to find and employ staff with a suitable competence. Therefore the project aimed to analyze the need for competence development within organizations dealing with Technical Communication, in order to develop suitable courses for students to obtain employabil-ity. A model for course development based on Triple loop learning has been developed and is presented. The steps in the model are: State of the art within the area of Technical Communica-tion; Identification of requirements and quality requirement for Technical Communication; Iden-tification of need of competencies; Identification of existing courses and training; Course Devel-opment; Realization of courses; Evaluation of courses and effects of the courses; Further devel-opment of courses. The first step and part of step two was conducted as a literature study, while the other part of step two and step three was accomplished with help of interviews with different stakeholders. The course development and the realization of the courses were carried through to-gether with the industry partners in the project.
When it comes to co-operation between academia and industry everyone is convinced that it is a good thing. Our experience is also that there is much benefit in collaboration. However the ways of communication have to be considered. Balancing differences between different companies needs and balancing differences between the academic requirements on higher education and in-dustry partners desires regarding the courses have to be considered.
A conclusion from the project is that it is difficult to in one hand catch all needs and requirements from the stakeholders from different levels in the companies and on the other hand get a balance between different stakeholders interests. A method of working with those prob-lems is Team syntegrity. The difference between syntegration and other group work is that the participants are evenly and uniquely distributed and will collec-tively have the means, the knowledge, the experience, the perspectives, and the expertise, to deal with the topic. Team syntegrity also aims to balancing be-tween all different interests. The pre-sented course development model is therefore complemented with Team syntegrity as a method of catching and balancing requirements.
One conclusion is that it is necessary with a triple loop learning model to be able to develop and maintain courses that are up to date with the needs of the industry and coming students
Another conclusion is that the use of Team syntegrity as a balancing method seems to be promis-ing for the balance as well as for catching as much as possible of the stakeholder’s ideas.
关键词：course development, Triple loop learning, Team syntegrity, industry partners, col-laboration
