‘Facilitating reflection on Responsible Research and Innovation’, outline of the HEIRRI workshop in Accra

The GUNi’s Regional Office in Africa, together with the Association of African Universities (AAU) and the Global University Network for Innovation Secretariat, organized the workshop ‘Facilitating reflection on Responsible Research and Innovation’ on the 17^th October 2017 in Accra, Ghana, in the framework of the HEIRRI internationalization plan to spread the project amongst Higher Education Institutions outside Europe.

This workshop was focused on the Train the trainers course on Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), which is part of the educational materials developed by the UPF within the framework of the European project HEIRRI.

Despite the fact that teachers acknowledge the importance of steering research and innovation processes towards Responsible Research and Innovation, they are not always sure about how this could be done. This one-day in-service training workshop, “Facilitating reflection on Responsible Research and Innovation”, addresses this issue and proposes a way to support university professors and other actors in higher education who want to promote RRI in their institutions.

The workshop was attended by 17 participants from Ghana and Nigeria, from different universities (such as the Ghana Technology University College and the National Universities Commission of Nigeria, amongst others), different fields of study and several levels of experience, from PhD students to deputy directors of universities.

The programme was divided into three parts, in 2-hour sessions: reflecting the impacts of R&I, applying concepts of RRI and facilitating reflection on RRI in higher education.  During this workshop, participants dealt with specific case examples and they inquired and discussed the wider societal impacts of Research and Innovation processes, through animated debate and brainstorming activities. They also got to know concepts of RRI and discussed their value in re-thinking the science-society relationship, in changing the ways of Research and Innovation, and in teaching students in higher education. At the end of the day, participants were asked to come up with an activity to teach RRI, and very interesting ideas were proposed such as a game activity, an active problem based learning (PBL) activity and various field trips.

The GUNi Regional Office in Africa, through its president Prof. Peter A. Okebukola, has produced this video recapping the hightlights of the workshop.

This educational programme has been co-developed by the Study Centre of Science, Communication and Society and the Science Education Research Group from the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, both from Pompeu Fabra University.

The workshop was hosted by the Africa Regional Office of GUNi with Professor Peter A. Okebukola as President and Professor Shabani as Executive Secretary and with the collaboration of the Association of African Universities (AAU). The trainer for this course was Amelia Larkins, who collaborates with the project HEIRRI.


Este blog cuenta con la colaboración de la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología – Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación