High Education: towards development of innovative human capital

This article discusses an activity based approach for teaching and learning applied in Higher Education to the development of Human Capital capability. According to the Leif Edvinsson, in one of the classic works in the area of Knowledge Management, Human Capital plays a significant role in overall Intellectual Capital. ?? Intellectual capital is the sum of structural capital and human capital. Human capital refers to the knowledge, skill, and experience of the employees. Structural capital refers to the extension and manifestation of human capital. It includes tangibles such as the information technology systems, brand and company images, customer databases, organizational concepts and manuals.? [Bucklew and Edvinsson, 1999] From other, social and economics points of view, Eva Gamarnikow and Antony Green summarised Human Capital thus: ?In economic, capital refers to resources (whether financial or physical) that are used for the production of goods. It can also refer to all resources that bring in income. Social Capital and Human Capital are terms used in the social science to discuss analogous concepts with regard to social resources derived from social interaction (social capital) and individual development (human capital).? [Gamarnicow, 2003] For Higher Education in general, and for the development of activity based teaching and learning in particular, a comprehensive understanding of human capital is essential. Gamarnikow and Green clarify: ?There are at least four ways of thinking about human capital. For economists, human capital has a specific, narrow meaning: It refers to the opportunity cost of individuals' or states' investing in education-forgone earnings plus the cost of education set against expectations of future (higher) earnings and economic productivity, respectively. At the other extreme, the term human capital is often as used merely as popular shorthand for education in general. The two intermediate perspectives are much more critical and compare the human capital approach to education unfavourably with other approaches. The first of these critical perspectives focuses on the social role of education. ? The other critical perspective focuses on the ways in which education operates at the level of the individual. It criticises the human capital approach for reducing education to the inculcation of marketable skills rather than taking a holistic approach and educating the whole person.? As part of its strategic plans to support development of the Knowledge-based Economy, Southampton Solent University (SSU) aims to advance appropriate programmes of study. For this purpose an activity based approach for teaching and learning is in process of deployment at Faculty of Technology at SSU. The article discusses definitions of Intellectual Capital, Human Capital, Social Capital, Knowledge Management and Knowledge, their interaction in the global information environment and in the particular context of Higher Education. It presents also the principles and design of an activity-based model for learning and teaching and relevant illustrations.