The case for an innovations framework for technology-enabled learning environments and knowledge translation

In order for innovations to fulfill their potential and deliver maximum value for education and health services, they need to be distributed and adopted as widely as possible. Like many large educational and health service organizations, a large urban Australian university was faced with the challenge of managing existing educational technologies while identifying, nurturing, and scaling up innovations to benefit the organization. Representatives from various faculties and support units participated in a working party (the Innovations Framework Working Party ), to align resources to best leverage the value of technological innovations in learning and teaching. The Working Party developed an Innovations Framework to address the strategic imperatives as well as individual motivations which involved setting goals for innovations followed by nurturing, developing, disseminating, and mainstreaming innovations within the institution. This served as the conceptual and practical basis for planning resource allocation, including internal university learning and teaching grants, and for managing an increasingly diverse and expanding suite of educational technology innovations. This chapter argues that an Innovations Framework, often used in business research and development, could also be used as a tool to facilitate knowledge translation activities in health-care contexts.