The document summarizes research conducted on knowledge transfer between academic and practitioner communities in New Zealand's technical communication field. The researcher conducted surveys and interviews of practitioners to understand how and why knowledge is not effectively transferred between the two communities. Results showed practitioners do not make use of academic research and see academics as disconnected from their work. The researcher proposes initiatives to improve communication and knowledge sharing between academics and practitioners.
1. Knowledge Transfer between Practitioners and Academics in New Zealand. Joel A. Kline Associate Professor of Business and Digital Communications Lebanon Valley College June 4, 2008
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10. A/I Interaction Locus Model Academia Industry Face-to-Face Interaction Publications Virtual Interaction Figure 1: Academic/Industry Interaction Locus Model
15. Metaphorically Speaking 20.8% 16 My own metaphor (enter below) 13.0% 10 Finding Unity in Difference 29.9% 23 Meeting in Overlapping Spaces 20.8% 16 Narrowing Gaps and Differences 15.6% 12 Building Bridges
16. Locations Preferred by Industry Each Less than 10% Teaching Papers (courses) Serving on Advisory Board Mentoring College Students Academic Consultants in your Workplace 10.8 % None of these 17.5% Seminars 20.1% Membership Organizations 22.2% Conferences Practitioners Prefer Location
As many of you know, I am in New Zealand for the spring semester at the University of Waikato, in Hamilton, NZ. I decided to study technical communicators in NZ with respect to knowledge transfer between the academic and practitioner communities. I chose to start with a survey and then conduct personal interviews.
Literature on NZ TC is sparse and literature on knowledge transfer between academia and industry is extensive! The research on knowledge transfer includes subjects like technology transfer, economics of university research, patents/copyright/licensing, academic entrepreneurship, Technology Transfer Offices (TTO), and more. I located whatever research I could find on TC in NZ and then narrowed down the knowledge transfer literature to studies and research that fit appropriately with TC. Research in the organizational sciences and information sciences can be extended to TC.
This is a very pragmatic topic that initially involves basic transfer mechanisms and perceptions about the relationship between two communities (specifically to share information). Since this research is a pilot for some dissertation research, I wanted to perform the research before I actually applied any theory (Dr. Barker and I have been discussing Actor-Network theory as part of the act of information exchange). Consequently, I feel that my methodology is to make some assumptions to guide the research, use the collected data to frame the subject, and identify the pragmatic obstacles to information exchange. By discovering these elements I can then use the results to search for theory or models of suitable information exchange.
Performed an online survey and then used volunteers from the survey to conduct personal interviews. In Mirel and Spilka’s book “Reshaping Technical Communication, New Directions and Challenges for the 21 st Century”, the authors address the subject of revising the relationship between industry and academia. They suggest several metaphors for describing the goals of industry and academic partnership but agree that the issue is so complex it might not be symbolized through a simple metaphor. I posed the metaphors to respondents to see if there was any agreement.
Here are some qualitative results in terms of the subject matter:
What you’re viewing is a stacked chart which depicts how useful practitioners find different sources of knowledge. If you scan across the x axis you can read the sources of knowledge (colleagues, academic periodicals, etc). Imagine a vertical line directly above each resource and follow that line through the colors. The more of one color the more responses for that choice. Choices (colors) start at zero on y axis and move to the top in this order Very Useful (blue), Useful (Magenta), Neutral (Tan), Rarely Useful (Green), or Never Useful (Purple). Look at colleagues. It has a lot of blue (very useful) and a lot of purple (useful). This indicates a large number of respondents find colleagues a useful source of information. Now look at Academic Periodicals or Interaction with Academic Professors…
Here is an oversimplified discussion of the results of the survey and initial results from the interviews.