What do we do?
COURSE PROJECTS
The vast majority of community questions received by CSS find their way into course projects. These are group tasks embedded in a university course, during which students explore the question in collaboration with the lecturer and the community partner and usually ending up by providing a (business) solution to a practical problem.Students typically work in teams of 3 to 6, utilising both secondary (literature and existing research- based) and primary (focus group, interview, questionnaire etc.) research methodologies, relying on their knowledge of business administration and the topics covered in the given course.
If a course project succeeds in aligning educational goals and the needs of the community partner, the international practice of community engaged teaching and learning comes to life. It is this aspect that we currently consider to be one of Corvinus Science Shop’s key priorities.
Courses/topics where community engaged teaching and learning have been implemented to date.
Previous course projects
Soon to be uploaded
THESIS WORK AND STUDENT RESEARCH
Research questions of communities are channelled into a theoretically explored, individual or pair-based research implemented over a longer period of time. Further to the thesis work, Corvinus is also engaged in student research via the Student Scientific Conference. In both cases, students work in collaboration with the community partners under the guidance of their supervisors.Community partners not only provide great thesis questions, but also offer significant advantages. While a student often encounters limited access to corporate data and faces a compulsory confidentiality agreement, community partners are usually happy to share their accumulated knowledge, information and data, and, more to the point, they are ready to implement the findings.
CSS operates an online thesis question database and experiments with the organisation of thesis fairs for Master programmes. It provides a framework for the formulation of the research question and the research process to support collaboration among partners.
Thesis question database
Soon to be uploaded
RESEARCH
One of CSS’s goals for the near future is research with community partners. We have been piloting participatory research, applying for grants, and planning a study for community partners at Corvinus’s new campus.
CSS research is, however, already ongoing. Members of the CSS Team employ scientific research methodologies to study science shop dynamics and operations and to share their findings – both locally and internationally – through academic publications and conferences.
Research findings also serve to improve Science Shop processes and stakeholder interactions and are channelled into social impact measurement of CSS and its projects.
Publications
CSS Team members serve various roles. They are founders of Corvinus Science Shop thus they have been actively shaping this organisation from early on. They are organisers and facilitators of the workshops of CSS for mutual learning – and their collegial experiences as lecturers and researchers of Corvinus are organically integrated to these roles. As researchers they have been exploring internal processes and dynamics of CSS, the interrelations and collaborations of various partners and stakeholders to provide feedback as well as improve science shop processes, contents and relationships. These findings are shared not only with the lecturers, students and community partners of CSS but also academic audiences: via papers, conference presentations and publication in Hungary and abroad. Please find our local and international academic and media presence as well as Hungarian conferences and workshops we jointly organised with academic partners in this chapter.
Andrea Toarniczky, Réka Matolay, Judit
Gáspár:
Responsive Higher Education through
Transformational Practices – The Case
of a Hungarian Business School
Futures, 111: 181-193, 2019
This collective case study reports on transformational learning processes at a leading business school in Hungary. It reflects on the disorienting dilemmas/assumptions shaping the dynamic relationship among students, faculty and the institution. The three steps of the case study reveal how transformational learning in higher education might be supported at various levels, such as the levels of the individual educator; the community of educators; and the structure as such. Our article is one of the outcomes of a bottom-up faculty development process building on Responsible Research and Innovation. The case presents practical limitations of the theoretical process of transformational learning, and through the understanding of these limitations gives new insights into the nature of the process itself.
MUTUAL LEARNING
CSS develops and runs workshops for lecturers and community partners to strengthen co-operations. We provide tools and exercises for improving course projects, as well as, collect feedback from all stakeholder groups.
We also offer workshops to higher education institutions in the region, keeping in mind the local characteristics of setting-up and operating science shops.
These workshops are designed in line with the idea and philosophy of science shops: interaction and participation, mutual learning and co-creation are central to these events.
CIRCLET
Curriculum Innovation Through Research with Communities: Learning Circles of Educators and Technology
Community engaged research and learning (CERL)
are promoted in the Erasmus+ projects by two essential
elements:
- integration of online technologies
- learning circles of lecturers locally and internationally, where peer learning as well as learning from experts and stakeholders are aimed for.
We started the project in the 2019-2020 academic year.
The need assessment and grant application process
took place in the 2018-2019 academic year though.