Higher Education Partnerships with Nonprofit and Profit Organizations, an Introduction

Abstract

Across the globe, institutions of higher education are positioned to generate and test innovative high-technology capabilities and lead their adoption in our STEM-driven worldwide market by investing in partnerships with nonprofit and profit organizations. Multifaceted collaborations among educational enterprises can support the design, implementation, and evaluation of learning using mobile devices and advocate concomitantly how best to change pedagogical practices in order to advance student learning. This introduction highlights scholarship around mobile learning within existing partnerships between higher education institutions and nonprofit and profit organizations. Partnerships include affiliations internal to higher education institutions, alliances crossing international boundaries, collaborations engaging P–12 school systems, and syndicates aligning organizations and companies within the educational marketplace. Examples from the current scholarship are highlighted in the Introduction and then unpacked by leading international researchers who authored the chapters that follow. A common recommendation underscores the need to prepare students for the STEM-focused global economy by utilizing the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices in both formal and informal learning environments. While this section addresses how to adopt and refine mobile technology in learning environments by harnessing the collective expertise from multiple organizations, leading international researchers also propose feasible opportunities for immediate action and evaluation that are guided by the needs of partnering entities.