Knowledge Innovation Centre

Who are we?

The Knowledge Innovation Centre (KIC) is a dynamic consultancy focusing on knowledge brokerage and innovation of knowledge transfer processes. The Centre brings together a variety of local and European experts from a variety of fields, and has worked extensively within Quality Assurance of Higher Education, Technology Enhanced Learning, Student Services and the knowledge economy (as it relates to the Lisbon Agenda and Barcelona Process). The Centre has forged close relationships with a number of stakeholders in the regional innovation and Higher Education fields, and is active in leveraging such relationships to build multi-disciplinary, multi-country networks for knowledge transfer and capitalization.

KIC also offers a full range of project management services, from bid-conceptualization and writing, to lifecycle management and final reporting. KIC has access to consultants specialized in ICT-process integration, education & healthcare policies, innovation management, and youth policy. Last but not least KIC’s outreach services encompass both technological and person-to-person services. For the former, KIC molds your online presence using a combination of web-sites, social-networking expertise and online document publication; for the latter KIC has the expertise in organizing focus groups, outreach campaigns, consultations and surveys, as demanded by the terms of the brief.

Why we are Participating in the Project

KIC has extensive experience in Quality in Education, especially applied to work-based learning, a sub-sector where KIC has been putting much effort in the past years, through several applied research projects. Our aim with MentorTrain is to complement previous work done, by approaching the subject from the perspective of human resources and mentors, who are critical to the success of any apprenticeship.

Our Role in the Project

At the MentorTrain project KIC will collaborate with the partners in the development of all intellectual outputs and lead the creation of a design-thinking-framework which can be applied by apprenticeship-managers and/or mentors within companies to design high quality and meaningful apprenticeship placements (intellectual output 3). Across the project KIC will also be responsible for the internal an external communication, including the networking strategy and dissemination planing.

Our Team

Anthony F. Camilleri

Anthony F. Camilleri

Senior Partner

Anthony’s expertise are Quality Assurance processes and knowledge transfer of research. Within Quality Assurance he has given training on techniques for peer-review to quality assurance agencies around Europe, and contributed to the UNIQUe and ECBCheck guidelines on quality assurance of e-learning. With respect to knowledge transfer, he has worked with several associations to better describe their research outcomes through their communication channels, included through improved and more targeted web presence, better social media handling and production of final publications, including most recently OERTest and EQUNET. He has also developed a methodology for improving impact measurement of dissemination and exploitation activities within EU projects. Mr. Camilleri was previously engaged as Quality Services Manager for EFQUEL, where he was responsible for coordination of projects linked to OER including OERTest and VMPass.

Sandra Feliciano

Sandra Feliciano

Research Associate

Sandra graduated in Social Sciences, post-graduated in Evaluation in Education and has over 20 years of experience with quality management applied to complex sectors where the human factor is critical, such as Education, Health and Social Care Services, Government and Aerospace, where she is an experienced international consultant and trainer as well as a qualified Auditor and Evaluator for several Accreditation and Certification schemes in these sectors. Aside from her work at KIC, she is also a part-time Teacher at the School of Management and Technology of Porto Polytechnic, where she teaches Standardization, Quality Management, Human Resources Management and Management Systems Audits at Master level. Having worked with policy making and national, European and international standardization since 2008, she recently represented Portugal and Angola at ISO/TC176 during the last revision of ISO 9001 and lead the development of ISO 21001, the first ISO Management System Standard for Educational Organizations, published on May 1, 2018.

Nik Heerens

Nik Heerens

Research & Development Associate

Nik has been working in the field of higher education for the last 20 years, mostly related to the Bologna Process, Quality Assurance, students’ engagement and regional development. He has been director of the European Students’ Union, head of sparqs (student partnerships in quality Scotland) and held senior management positions at overseas development organisations SPARK in the Netherlands and Signal in the UK. Nik is currently holding a position as research & development associate at KIC where he mainly focuses on projects related to Quality Assurance, work-place learning and social inclusion.