About

About the HELIX Innovations Collection

The HELIX Innovations Collection, from the Higher Education Leadership and Innovation eXchange, is intended to spark conversation about new ideas and promising practices for the next generation of higher education. The Collection does this by inviting higher education practitioners, researchers, and policy makers to make their voices heard and speak out about potential solutions to the challenges faced by the field today.

Generally speaking, many realize that current higher education practices are built on a foundation which is becoming more and more inadequate as we move into the 21st century. While economic and societal needs and priorities have changed, higher education principles and practices remain 'trapped in amber'. Most agree that change is needed and needed now!

The 'crowdsourcing' potential of Web 2.0 technologies now provides the opportunity to share innovations quickly, identify their potential, and refine them with the help of peers worldwide.

Why We Created It

Our thoughts have always been that true innovation is open, involving many free voices. Higher education, somewhat of a field slow to change, is no exception. We were quite energized with the advent of web 2.0 technologies, hopeful that these would provide the lone voices in the academic wilderness the opportunity to throw down with the so-called 'best of them' and challenge the disassociated pinnacles of higher ed research, practice, and policy.

We created the HELIX Innovations Collection to allow all those concerned with the state-of-art of higher education to share and comment on innovative solutions to the problems faced by the field today. Who decides which ideas are innovative and which seem a bit before their time (to put it mildly)? You do! The Collection is open to all to suggest ideas, and to comment and express their support for an idea by rating it along five dimensions of innovation.

It is our hope that the innovations which receive broad support and fine-tuning by the 'crowd' will be picked up by practitioners in the field and discussed/piloted/implemented by their home institutions. We hope true linkages between research, policy, and practice will be forged from this collaborative effort and, as innovators and curators, we will make efforts to point out such connections for further discussion.

Have fun with this first iteration of the Collection, be respectful, and engage!

Jim & Greg

p.s. HELIX, the Higher Education Leadership and Innovation eXchange, is a networking and information sharing resource for higher education research, policy, and practice.  Follow HELIX on Twitter.