Abstract
This research focuses on the development of a skills hub for partners in the process
of knowledge exchange in the knowledge sharing context of information and
knowledge management. The skills hub was developed as a minimal viable product
(MVP) to produce a workable skills hub through a collaborative process between
contributing knowledge partners. The research was conducted in the field of
information technology (IT).
Participatory action research (PAR) allowed for collaboration between the purposefully
selected knowledge exchange partners to visualise the skills data that were shared
during the PAR process. The contributing knowledge partners offered their views on
the challenges that they were experiencing in addressing the skills mismatch through
semi-structured interviews. An interpretivist approach underpinned the collection and
analysis of qualitative data. In this empirical research, visual displays were used to
report the findings and their practical application. The research aimed to reflect the
skills supply and demand mismatch between Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and
Industry by means of visualisation.
In this research, visualisation refers to the representation of a skills mismatch via a
skills hub which results from the skills data captured. Moreover, visualisation is an
outcome of the IT application that has been developed for this research. The IT
application is the MVP that produces graphic presentations of the skills mismatch or,
in the absence of a mismatch, their alignment. Resulting from visualisation, the skills
mismatch can be updated as the visuals will be refreshed when more skills data are
added. The purpose of updating the shared skills is to provide insight into whether the
skills gap is diminishing or not.
In particular, the MVP skills hub, which this research has developed, can be applied
to the working environment of the contributing knowledge partners who participated in
this research to test and validate the skills hub visualisation. In general, visualisation
will assist HEIs knowledge partners to become aware of the skills demand, to consider
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adjusting the academic curricula and to reduce delays in supplying those skills that
are most in demand. Therefore, the visualisation of skills in demand versus skills in
supply could entice knowledge partners to take action in addressing the skills
mismatch in collaborative partnerships.
The findings and the recommendations of this research indicate the need for an online
skills hub to highlight the gap between the skills supplied by HEIs and the skills
demanded by Industry. This research could be extended to other knowledge partners
and curricula in order to establish whether the results would have been different should
more than one type of contributing partner in Higher Education engage.
Keywords: Collaboration, knowledge exchange, knowledge partners, participatory
action research, skills, skills hub, visualisation.