Sustainable Innovation in Higher Education: The Impact of Gender on Innovation Competences

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is very interesting topic and one of the few studies that collected data from Higher Education Lecturers/teachers.

However, it is very descriptive. I would suggest the following:

Author (s) should try to highlight motivations of the study, contribution of the study, research gap, etc in the introduction.

Author(s) have to present a section on Literature review and some theories that are relevant to this topic.

There is no Methodology section. Author(s) have to write a section on methodology section and explain how did they develop their survey question and how many responses they got and how long they left the survey open, etc,... so more details about the research process is required.

Results. Results are so descriptive. Author(s) have to link some demographic variables to some of the survey questions to make it more interesting as this will make the discussion more strong.

Conclusion has to be updated after revising the whole paper 

Author Response

We would like to thank the editor and the referees for their useful comments and suggestions that we consider valuable to improve the quality and contribution of this work. Please, find attached our response to each one of the reviewers’ queries.

This is very interesting topic and one of the few studies that collected data from Higher Education Lecturers/teachers.

We agree with the reviewer about the interest of the topic and the importance of collecting data from real higher education institutions. Following the suggestions, we have modified some aspects of our work in order to improve it.

However, it is very descriptive. I would suggest the following:

Author (s) should try to highlight motivations of the study, contribution of the study, research gap, etc in the introduction.

Regarding this first comment of the reviewer, we agree that the topic is an important one in the present era. To emphasize the unique findings we have included some modifications in the "Introduction" and "Conclusions" sections in order to highlight the motivations, contribution and research gap.

The "Introduction" section includes a paragraph which remarks the gap of the literature and the unique research carried out, as well as the significance of the study:

"However, although the literature contains relevant studies on the topic of competences, there is insufficient empirical evidence related to gender. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, there are no previous studies that specifically analyse students' perception of innovation competence achievement and the impact of gender on the development of such competences.

Students’ innovation competence development is of growing importance in higher education. Nevertheless, existing results remain inconclusive, thus laying bare the need for more empirical evidence. This study was designed to fill this gap in the literature by analysing the innovation competence level of students on the Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Management at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) through self-assessment questionnaire. Not only will this pursuit improve our knowledge of innovation competence achievement, it will provide insight into the role of gender in education and, more specifically, in competence-building. Such knowledge and insight can then be used to come up with solutions that demolish the barriers currently hindering competence development."

In the "Conclusion" section we have added a paragraph emphasizing this idea: "The existing gap in the literature has been taken into account in order to improve the comprehension of the role of gender over innovation competences."

Author(s) have to present a section on Literature review and some theories that are relevant to this topic.

Following the guidelines of the journal we have maintained a unique section that collects the introduction and the literature review. We think that a unique section avoids the possibility of repetition of some points when reading the paper.  

As the reviewer noted, there is a little weight to the literature review which queries theories related to this topic. Although the literature contains relevant studies on the topic of competences, there is insufficient empirical evidence related to competences and gender. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, there are no previous studies that specifically analyse students' perception of innovation competence achievement and the impact of gender on the development of such competences.

So, we have given more importance to the specific context of our work, that is the one of the levels of achievement of students’ innovation competences, by considering two sustainable development goals (SDG) of the 2030 United Nations’ Agenda: Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Quality Education (SDG 4). For this reason, we have focused our literature review on those concepts that we believe are closely related to the central topic of our manuscript.  On the one hand the innovation competences related to higher education and on the other hand the role of gender on innovation and competences.

To improve the literature review we have included additional references. The new references included in the Literature review of this new version of the manuscript are: UNESCO (2012), David (2015) and Yordanova et al. (2020).

There is no Methodology section. Author(s) have to write a section on methodology section and explain how did they develop their survey question and how many responses they got and how long they left the survey open, etc,... so more details about the research process is required.

Following the recommendation of the reviewer, we have included some additional explanation in the “Sample and Data collection” section about the survey. 

“A self-assessment e-questionnaire was made available to students for 21 days via a link in their virtual classroom at the end of the first and second semesters of the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 academic years, and a total of 360 responses were received. This is, in fact, the entire population, as the questionnaire was compulsory.

The questionnaire was designed to gather information on students’ perception of their level of acquisition of the different groups of innovation competences. The students taking the questionnaire were instructed to rate their own innovation competences on a 5-point Likert scale: 1 = very poor; 2 = poor, 3 = average; 4 = good, and 5 = excellent. The first part of the questionnaire included several questions on sample characteristics, such as gender, age, the semester in which the student was taking the course and the name of their final project tutor. The other parts of the questionnaire collected information on innovation competences.”

Results. Results are so descriptive. Author(s) have to link some demographic variables to some of the survey questions to make it more interesting as this will make the discussion more strong.

The aim of this paper was to analyse specifically the role of gender over the innovation competences, so other demographic variables such as age were not taken into account. However, the analysis of other demographic variables is an interesting topic that could be taken into account in future research.

Conclusion has to be updated after revising the whole paper 

We have included some modifications in the "Conclusions" section that we hope could help to improve this part. 

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors reveal themselves to be aware of the various limitations of the empirical study.

The article addresses a relevant theme, but in some aspects requires a more solid foundation and literature review.

Author Response

We would like to thank the editor and the referees for their useful comments and suggestions that we consider valuable to improve the quality and contribution of this work. Please, find attached our response to each one of the reviewers’ queries.

The authors reveal themselves to be aware of the various limitations of the empirical study.

The article addresses a relevant theme, but in some aspects requires a more solid foundation and literature review.

We agree with the reviewer about the interest and the relevancy of the topic. Despite the limitations of the study, it is important to note the value of the paper. The literature contains relevant studies on the topic of competences. However, there is insufficient empirical evidence related to gender and there are no previous studies that specifically analyse students' perception of innovation competence achievement and the impact of gender on the development of such competences. Therefore, this paper fills a gap in the literature providing insights for higher education institutions and their stakeholders about gender and innovation competences.

Following the suggestions, we have modified some aspects of our work in order to improve it. We have included some new paragraphs in the introduction and literature review section, methodology and conclusions section.

Reviewer 3 Report

Thanks to the editor for giving me this opportunity to evaluate. 
The article is very interesting because it shows a reality of today's society. 
It shows 2 SDG goals that are very important to work on every day in the classroom. 

In order to explain the article, I will do so in sections: 

• I think the summary is very accurate and comprehensive. It briefly shows the research problem, results and conclusions.
• With regard to the theoretical framework, it is correct. However, I would advise the author to expand a little with more theoretical references that work on gender equality in the classroom and innovation. Furthermore, it only incorporates 2 references from Sustainability journal, and I believe that much more has been published on this subject.
• The section on Methodology is very sparse. The methodology to be followed and the procedure are not fully explained. For a quantitative methodology, it is very important to develop it explicitly. I suggest the author to reformulate this section
• The results seem to me to be comprehensive, although they could be developed further.

• The authors should get down of rewriting the whole of the conclusion. This, I expect, the "Conclusions" simply needs to answer the research aim, and the "Limitation" and "Recommendations" should appear in a separate heading of the "Conclusions". There are a lot of phrases in the "conclusion" that should be in the "Discussion".

Author Response

We would like to thank the editor and the referees for their useful comments and suggestions that we consider valuable to improve the quality and contribution of this work. Please, find attached our response to each one of the reviewers’ queries.

Thanks to the editor for giving me this opportunity to evaluate. 
The article is very interesting because it shows a reality of today's society. 
It shows 2 SDG goals that are very important to work on every day in the classroom. 

We agree with the reviewer about the interest of the topic and the importance of the SDG goals in higher education. Following the suggestions, we have modified some aspects of our work in order to improve it.

In order to explain the article, I will do so in sections: 

• I think the summary is very accurate and comprehensive. It briefly shows the research problem, results and conclusions.

We want to thank the reviewer for his/her positive feedback.

• With regard to the theoretical framework, it is correct. However, I would advise the author to expand a little with more theoretical references that work on gender equality in the classroom and innovation. Furthermore, it only incorporates 2 references from Sustainability journal, and I believe that much more has been published on this subject.

As the reviewer noted, there is a little weight to the literature review which queries theories related to this topic. Although the literature contains relevant studies on the topic of competences, there is insufficient empirical evidence related to gender. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, there are no previous studies that specifically analyse students' perception of innovation competence achievement and the impact of gender on the development of such competences.

Although the existence of studies about innovation competences, as we have pointed out in the literature review, these studies mainly focus on  the components of such competences, their measurement and how learning environments influence the achievement of this type of competences. Although gender studies about competences also have been carried out, however, there are no studies that analyse the relationship between gender and innovation competences.

So, we have given more importance to the specific context of our work, that is the level of achievement of students’ innovation competences, by considering two sustainable development goals (SDG) of the 2030 United Nations’ Agenda: Gender Equality (SDG 5) and Quality Education (SDG 4). For this reason, we have focused our literature review on those concepts that we believe are closely related to the central topic of our manuscript.  On the one hand the innovation competences related to higher education and on the other hand the role of gender on innovation and competences.

To improve the literature review we have included additional references. The new references included in the Literature review of this new version of the manuscript are: UNESCO (2012), David (2015) and Yordanova et al. (2020).

• The section on Methodology is very sparse. The methodology to be followed and the procedure are not fully explained. For a quantitative methodology, it is very important to develop it explicitly. I suggest the author to reformulate this section

Following the recommendation of the reviewer, we have included some additional explanation in the “Sample and Data collection” section about the survey. 

“A self-assessment e-questionnaire was made available to students for 21 days via a link in their virtual classroom at the end of the first and second semesters of the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 academic years, and a total of 360 responses were received. This is, in fact, the entire population, as the questionnaire was compulsory.

The questionnaire was designed to gather information on students’ perception of their level of acquisition of the different groups of innovation competences. The students taking the questionnaire were instructed to rate their own innovation competences on a 5-point Likert scale: 1 = very poor; 2 = poor, 3 = average; 4 = good, and 5 = excellent. The first part of the questionnaire included several questions on sample characteristics, such as gender, age, the semester in which the student was taking the course and the name of their final project tutor. The other parts of the questionnaire collected information on innovation competences.”

• The results seem to me to be comprehensive, although they could be developed further.

As the reviewer points out, the results section is comprehensive and describes the results obtained. Their development and interpretation are presented in the Discussion section.

• The authors should get down of rewriting the whole of the conclusion. This, I expect, the "Conclusions" simply needs to answer the research aim, and the "Limitation" and "Recommendations" should appear in a separate heading of the "Conclusions". There are a lot of phrases in the "conclusion" that should be in the "Discussion".

We have included some modifications in the "Conclusions" section that we hope could help to improve this part. Moreover, as suggested by the reviewer, we have moved some paragraphs of the Conclusions section to the Discussion section.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Happy to accept the paper