Abstract
Research excellence is part of the mission statements of universities and business schools globally. Indeed, many universities identify ‘critical thinking’ as a key competency and a programme goal in graduate attributes and a ‘capacity for life-long learning’. Though, are our students research-capable and are they critical-thinkers? Ulker and Bakioglu (2019) argue that business education accreditation allows schools to reach and maintain research excellence and high-quality outcomes in education and societal impact. Continued focus on high-quality outcomes, demonstration of competencies by learners upon programme completion as well as technology competence (AACSB, 2022) are the key characteristics of the accredited schools. With assurance of learning requirements, there is an increased pressure for universities to be able to demonstrate that all graduates are achieving what might have previously been aspirational attributes. The developmental paper introduces findings from an international collaborative project on the adoption of an education innovation. The project involved the adoption of the research skill development (RSD) framework, and to champion it a UK university. The University-level project targeted ‘early adopters’ to develop academic practices for mapping research skills and autonomy levels in modules, and explicitly enhance the alignment with ‘research/critical thinking’ learning outcomes and graduate attributes. This paper discusses the challenges in making research skills explicit in modules for ‘early adopters’, and in directing and measuring students’ research skill development. It highlights challenges of innovation adoption by academics, development of communities of practice, and teaching partnerships with the library staff, academic skills advisors and module leaders. At this developmental stage, we are able to share early outcomes of the innovation adoption across the university. We propose to focus on project participants, in particular on selecting, supporting and activating educator capabilities to adopt innovation in undergraduate curriculum.