Research & Education Convergence Center Based On Collaboration

Convergence Center (CC) is the place where information, technology and research outcomes gather, integrate and transfer to industry applications and education materials. After the emergence of CC, many famous Universities and Institutes established such organizations independently or with other partners, in order to improve the efficiency of transformation process and cross-discipline cooperation. CC and ERCs (Engineering Research Center) have been built to enhance the quality of education. These CCs transferred research outcomes into courses, publications, online courses and other programs to educate people, and formed a huge educational market. In contrast to US cases, China has developed CC for some years, such as ERC, Technology Park, etc. However, these organizations make little contribution to education, especially in aspect of courses, publications, experiment and other teaching activities.In the context, based on Knowledge collaboration, Synergetic and Bi-Organization Theories, the author comes up with a new concept of Research and Education Convergence Center (RECC), in order to create more educational materials. The structure can divide into two sectors, the resources integration and outcomes transformation. In resources integration sector, the context focuses on fund resources and internal/external Human Resources. While in outcomes transformation part, the author mainly considers the quantity and quality of the courses, publications, online courses and other activities. Then, the context collects two major examples to verify the necessity of CC and how to operate, one of the examples is Stanford Research and Education Convergence Center, the other is ERC in US. Finally, the author suggests creating Research and Education Convergence Center in China and summarizes the goal, function, organization structure, assessment index, and management mode.