Community Partnership Through Knowledge Transfer Program: Assessment From the Perspectives of Academics’ Experience

Abstract

The knowledge transfer program (KTP) in Malaysia was instituted to facilitate knowledge transfer, collaboration, and interaction between academics in public higher institutions and other stakeholders. These programs are divided into community or industry programs. Under the community program, academics collaborate with a community partner to utilize their research findings in the community environment. This quantitative study attempts to assess KTP based on academics’ postproject responses to online questionnaires. The participants in this study consist of 132 academics of Malaysian public universities of Rolling 1 to Rolling 4 projects between 2011 and 2016. Of 132 individuals invited to participate, 84 of them (64%) took part in the online survey. These data were analyzed using analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Duncan’s range test. The findings indicate that the KTP has enabled academics, irrespective of position, to deploy their ideas and knowledge in a real-world community setting. The relationship between academic position and learning experience in transferring knowledge, however, is inverse: the higher the level of an academic position, the lower the learning experience. The findings also exhibit the experience and challenges that one would expect from the involvement of academics in a community KTP.