Scientific Journal of Riga Technical University Computer Science. Applied Computer Systems ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Volume 43 9 Towards Narrowing a Conceptual Gap between IT Industry and University Peteris Rudzajs, Riga Technical University, Ludmila Penicina, Riga Technical University, Marite Kirikova, Riga Technical University, Renate Strazdina, Riga Technical University Abstract - The situation when the number of the students and the popularity of the engineering education in general and IT education in particular is not increasing dramatically due to the fact that there exists an opinion that engineering education is complex and time-consuming from one side and that the graduates are not sufficiently prepared for the industry from another, requires the University to perform a series of actions that can improve the current situation. One of the areas for improvement is the quality of the study programs in the sense of their suitability to ‘customers’, namely Students and Industry. Previous research shows that the knowledge requirements monitoring system and the processes behind it can improve the quality of the study programs, e.g. the results of the Value Network Analysis demonstrate that the Monitoring System can give additional value to both the University and the Industry. Developing a monitoring system prototype requires narrowing the gap between industry and university and introduces new ways of industry-university cooperation. Keywords: cooperation, feedback, inter-organizational knowledge flows, skills framework, study program I. INTRODUCTION The paper is positioned in the area of knowledge management in the engineering education ecosystem [1]. This ecosystem encompasses an institution providing engineering education (further in the text – University) and directly or indirectly related organizations that contribute to and/or benefit from the results of activities of the University. We address the following research question: How the relationship between industrial organizations (further in the text – Industry) and University might be strengthened in terms of innovative methods and tools of cooperation. Basically, the design science is applied as a research method [2], i.e., an innovative artefact is developed and tested regarding its applicability for the intended purpose. The research described in this paper is rooted in investigations in the area of knowledge requirements analysis that are reported in [3] – [5]. Previous work proved that specific information systems support is needed to monitor changing knowledge requirements that come from industrial partners, standardization bodies and other institutions interested in the result of engineering education. It identified also that a gap exists between conceptual structures used for describing knowledge requirements in Industry and University. This conceptual gap hinders the possibility of understanding industrial needs of graduates’ knowledge by university and getting the right perception of the scope of available knowledge by industrial organizations. To narrow the identified conceptual gap the architecture of knowledge requirements monitoring system (an innovative artefact) was designed that allowed for fusion of knowledge requirements obtained from different sources thus supporting a higher availability of information concerning industrial knowledge needs and strengthening the links “industry → university” and “university → industry” via use of the knowledge requirements monitoring system [5]. In order to implement and start to evaluate the knowledge requirements monitoring system, the first prototype has been developed and the next prototypes are planned. This paper describes in detail exactly how the conceptual gap can be narrowed and what challenges are to be resolved in the implementation of an artefact – a knowledge requirements monitoring system prototype. The paper is structured as follows. An analysis of the current status of industrial understanding of university potential of knowledge provision is given in Section II. The conceptual gap between knowledge representation in terms of Industry and University is analyzed in Section III. Several theoretical approaches that potentially could narrow the conceptual gap between knowledge descriptions by Industry and University and may improve University-Industry collaboration are proposed. Then the issues of applying the proposed approaches are discussed in Section IV. At the end of the paper brief conclusions and directions for future work are presented. All practical implementations described in the paper refer to engineering education in the area of computer science and information technology. II. INDUSTRIAL AND ACADEMIC KNOWLEDGE One might think that nowadays the Industry is the source of scientific discoveries and technological progress and as a result – the driver of social change, but really what is at the source of scientific discoveries are new ideas. First comes the idea, which then during the accomplishment of the experiments can be proved wrong or right and the discovery is brought out. An idea is something that makes the discovery possible, and the most favourable environment for the birth of ideas is the academic environment. In an academic environment there should not be an emphasis on urgency – academic workers should be more relaxed in conducting the experiments and have a creative view of the problem without the specific technology frameworks – scientists are better in „thinking outside the box” than Industry workers, who might focus on the particular tool or standard that is related to the product or service that Industry is rendering [6]. Therefore