The contribution by the title "Application of Competence Models in Terms of University Management" deals with the possibilities of competence models in the hiring process for positions of academic functionaries or top managers of academic institutions. We have focused on the sector of education institutions because of their significant impact on development and society. It focuses particularly on the segment of quality of university institutions and the quality of a selected section of its human potential. The topic of the application of competence models is very real for countries in our region from a historical perspective, because it is not sufficiently studied or applied in the conditions of public and state institutions. In the practice of academic institutions in "post-communist countries" there is a need for quality managers with skills and features securing the progress of institutions, but also a need for their development, the quality of their activity and efficiency, and the satisfaction of their customers. It is absolutely important for circumstances where the subjects have thousands customers/students and dozens or hundreds of employees. The first section summarises theoretical outcomes and describes the current state of the research subject. Then, we define and explain the theoretical basis of the studied topic from the wider perspective of human resources in academic environments and the possibilities provided by the contemporary research state of competence models for application in concrete environments. It displays the need of their application in the higher education environment from the perspective of increasing the quality of academic institutions. In the next section we describe the research process aimed at the creation of a platform for a competence model for the positions of top managers at universities. It is followed by a definition of research questions and hypotheses and a short description of selected methods of quantitative research (questionnaire) and qualitative research (interview). Testing of the defined hypothesis is described in the next part by application of appropriate statistical methods. The survey into the opinions of managers and members of the academic community was carried out in order to implement the managerial competence valuation model assessing the academic, scientific, management and administrative positions at rectors' and deans' offices in higher education institutions. In fact, it documents the current attitudes of executives and university staff to the subject in question. The survey into the opinions and attitudes comprises also a third group of respondents: managers of private companies who also had the opportunity to comment on the subject of the research. In the final part of the contribution there is a description of how the research was processed as one part of a project with an aim to elaborate a set of requirements for the knowledge, skills and personal competencies of a candidate for the position of a faculty executive/manager, in particular a dean. On the basis of the research, a study of references and interviews with professionals, a proposal is defined for the total capability (managerial expertise, personal characteristics and application skills) of a candidate for a dean position. Definition, description and explanation of the concrete model as a result of the research and activities described in the contribution will be the subject of the next publication activity. The conclusion summarises the attained results.

Quality assurance of higher education institutions and objective evaluation of their quality are topical issues nowadays. Educational and scientific institutions equally and significantly contribute to the creation of wealth in a country just like any other technologically advanced areas, such as informatics, new materials and alike. The universities and institutions providing education are therefore at the centre of interest of politicians and governments. The impact of both the level of higher education institutions and their influence on the society is indubitable. Regarding the above-mentioned, each new and progressive element and a new procedure positively affecting the quality should be examined, developed and subsequently applied in practice. The first part of this paper contains theoretical background and description of the current state of academic institutions' quality in relation to the quality of the human resources and personalities of their managers in particular and briefly compares the state of the issue in the higher education sphere and entrepreneurial area. Then, the basic issues of the theory of holistic management capability of entities are explained and the need for the valuation of the complex managerial competence in academic institution is justified. The authors emphasise quality of universities and quality of their management, while presenting the opinions of various interested parties regarding individual traits of the university managers' personalities. The questions arose of how managers are needed today and what general competences they have in general and relating to science, and particularly what their personal traits are. Defined is a personality of a manager of higher education institution as well as what is expected and demanded of him in comparison with a manager in the entrepreneurial sphere. Briefly defined are three pillars of holistic managerial competence: general and specific knowledge, practical and application skills and personal qualities. Since the topic of personal qualities of managers is rather a taboo in post-communist countries, our goal was to find the opinions of interested parties of the possibility of introducing changes into the methods and procedures for selection of managerial positions in our relatively conservative academic environment, with the aim to prepare a progressive model of selection procedure. The important part of the article is therefore devoted to the results of the questionnaire survey into the opinions of three groups of respondents: representatives of the academic institutions' management, of enterprises' management, and academics - not involved in the university management. The questions were focused on the application of the method of assessing managerial competences in the selection of the academic and scientific managerial positions in higher education institutions. The results reflect the current views of the respondents regarding the above-mentioned issues. The final section discusses the survey results and draws conclusions regarding the potential applications of the acquired information and knowledge in practice of a higher education institution, or their integration into legislative documents. The research results presented in the current contribution represent a platform for the subsequent articulation and modelling of an acceptable process of selection procedure for managerial positions in academic institutions.

The paper focuses on the critical, systematic, historical and logical analysis of the relation "sustainable science in the European universities" versus "sustainable competitiveness of the European industry" within the context of global sustainable corporate social responsibility. The only alternative of achieving sustainability of life on the planet Earth and survival for human beings and all living creatures (biodiversity) is fair distribution of wealth. It is necessary to change the paradigm in the relation of science and competitiveness of industrial practice towards their sustainability, in compliance with the recommendations of the European Commission and the outcomes of many international congresses and conferences, including our activities, in terms of the concepts of sustainable development, HCS model 3E, corporate social responsibility and creating shared values.

In real life, one must understand such terms as knowledge acquisition, management, transfer, creation, dissemination, sharing, as well as intellectual capital, knowledge management systems, organisational knowledge and learning. From another point of view, there are different types of knowledge - tacit, explicit, and some authors use the term - embodied knowledge. However, the concept of knowledge is often poorly defined; it has different meanings from the various points of view belonging to knowledge management, information technology, education, or philosophy. In terms of computer support, individuals work mostly with unstructured knowledge. This complicates any computer support related to the processing of knowledge. Such knowledge issues mentioned above were first solved at an individual's level within an industrial R&D laboratory (a knowledge-based organisation). Afterwards in the university, this system was modified with knowledge processing by the use of the in-house developed, supportive personalised system of BIKE (Batch Information and Knowledge Editor). This took place within the research on Technology-enhanced Learning at the Slovak University of Technology. The preliminary results of the long-term research were gradually presented at conferences in the USA, Asia, Australia, and the EU. The system of BIKE was also presented as a multipurpose knowledge based system, including its application as a teacher's personalised management system. It covers several fields in informatics that are ongoing from an interdisciplinary definition of knowledge, knowledge tables, and the formulated batch knowledge-processing paradigm. Knowledge is defined as being a set of information structured and unstructured, having a specified content stored in one row of the knowledge table within a default structure. This paper explains and illustrates how it works in practice on a personal level for individuals, i.e. as a supportive informatics tool for knowledge processing, creation, management, including some examples of the conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, and the sharing of explicit knowledge within customer oriented knowledge management or teaching and learning processes.

Knowledge plays a key role within research, development, innovations and education. This paper presents the use of a long term developed of in-house software that enables a manager and teacher to process and manage knowledge on their desktop computers in a user friendly way. The application WritingPad was originally developed for information processing in an industrial R&D laboratory. The further development of the application continued within the implementation of “Technology-enhanced learning” at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology. This resulted in the development of a preprogrammed work environment called BIKE (Batch Information and Knowledge Editor). The environment works also as a teacher's personalized knowledge management system. It is programmed by the lead author of this paper who is a teacher; therefore the outcomes into teaching bachelor students are implemented directly into the classroom. The paper also presents how such IT support complements, at a personalized level, the existing organizational knowledge management tool known as the university's Academic Information System.

The content of the article is a critical system analysis of the relationship between sustainable science at European universities and sustainable competitiveness of European industry in the context of global sustainable corporate social responsibility. This article is linked with article:  From sustainable science at European universities to sustainable competitiveness of European industry in the context of global sustainable corporate social responsibility – II.

Researchers, teachers, librarians, and individuals in daily practice perform various activities that require the processing of large amounts of knowledge and dynamic information flow. The database application BIKE (Batch Knowledge and Information Editor) was developed within the implementation of Technology Enhanced Learning. Based on the paradigm of “batch knowledge processing”, it works as a universal, multi-purpose, pre-programmed "all-in-one" environment. The environment enables individuals to solve personalised approaches for producing teaching and learning materials, batch information retrieving, a personnel information system and also other applications. Some applications are presented in this paper.

International and national ratings of university institutions are now beginning to play a crucial role in the assessment and valuation of the quality of education and its research facilities. The authors give respect to the quality of universities and the quality of their management, and suggest different approaches to the selection of senior managers of universities in different parts of the world. The question arose of how managers are needed today and what general competences they have in general, relating to science, with an emphasis on their personal characteristics. Detailed discussions have taken place regarding the capability valuation of managers based on their knowledge IQ, practical skills AQ and social intelligence SQ. They highlight their importance and also why social intelligence comes to the fore. Based on their knowledge to look inside the academic community, they criticize the current methods of selecting university managers which are based on the necessary changes regarding this. They point to somewhere partial or to a strong academic isolated area from the pragmatic business environment - this is especially so when as an opinion of the conservative view of "old colleagues" that are in managerial positions and are more plentiful in numbers than younger academics and authors who have re-considered the need to change their current thinking and attitudes. This article also ensures that specialized centres make a good choice, or if there are any other ways of finding quality managers in the university environment. Ways and means for selecting officials in the academic environment and what can be considered as a good choice or chosen strategy for selection are dealt with here. A correctly chosen strategy of choice regarding the fundamental objective is needed, which is similar to the example of industrial companies, that is to say - to increase the performance of university institutions, in other words, an increase in international and national ratings.

A technology driven approach within personalized technology-enhanced learning for the teaching of bachelors was presented in previous contributions to WCECS. The focus was on the building of a supportive infrastructure, the developing of the in-house application BIKE (2010) and on the creation of a set of informatics tools for active learning (2011). In this paper, further progress is presented, where the focus is more on the education driven approach regarding automation of teaching. When programming technology by the teacher, participatory action research showed that, any excellent technology or knowledge base, would basically be "dead" if the teaching content was not transferable into the classroom. To revive the flow of knowledge the examination of teaching for sequences of steps is required together with content unification and the use of specific communication channels for each of the courses of study. If this all works together, then the teacher can select and mix the content of teaching, informatics tools, communication and didactic elements according to the actual requirements of the teaching process. In our case, this resulted inter alia, in the creation of two innovative teaching methods when teaching “how a writing semester works”. This radically helped to eliminate a “plagiarism culture” which beginning bachelor students are not aware of. It seems that after some years, an effective didactic methodology was found for this purpose. Further, technological aspects from the practice of TEL are described with the intention to demonstrate examples of how the teaching outputs are made by the “all-in-one” BIKE (which can cover all main topics of the conference). It is also explains the basic principle of how innovative teaching methods can be designed for bachelors from a teacher’s point of view when understanding TEL as automation of teaching and learning.

Quality assurance of higher education institutions and the objective evaluation of quality is an actual and open issue today. This problem is of interest to all developed and developing countries which are connecting their economic and educational futures with a modern, efficient higher educational system. Today's world is dominated by a generally accepted and recognized by the ranking and rating system of the Anglo-Saxon environment which is largely determined by scientometric indicators. In Europe, there are still countries that do not apply this system by deliberately ignoring it. From a knowledge management perspective it is therefore interesting to analyze the system used for evaluating colleges and universities. There have been attempts to apply holistic and systematic approaches to governing strategic, operational and crisis management, physically and financially together with elusive asset flows of university organizations and leadership within science, research, education as well as management and administrative institutions. One of the key principles of "knowledge management" is to effectively link those who know with those who need to know in order to transfer personal knowledge and individual expertise to the organization. In doing so, one of the aims of knowledge management is to measure and compare in order to create incentives to accelerate the learning process and to also create a cultural change within the organization. In this paper we analyze the concept of the quality of universities/higher education institutions - which are evaluated and measured in individual evaluation systems, why it is handled in the system with this tool and what the weaknesses of the tool are in the system. We point out the Common Assessment Framework - CAF as a tool to enhance knowledge management in a university institution, the collection and sharing of information, practices, drawing conclusions, self evaluation and external evaluation by the example of our faculty, which we have specifically addressed. We are going to document well-defined and prepared internal processes within the institution, as a result of the application of CAF-this has resulted in a 'drag' regarding knowledge and an increase of external "factors" (citations, publication activities, project success, etc.), under which the faculty / university receives a higher ranking in the assessment charts. We also compare the evaluation of the quality of university institutions within the world with that of Slovakia.

In this paper, the development of informatics tools and their testing for active learning support is described. The tools - programming scripts, optional menus, and tailored applications, are a part of the developed "Batch Information and Knowledge Editor". They are selected by a teacher from the knowledge editor's menu, and in the classroom are used directly for performing active learning at the university's detached workplace.

Four years ago, the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology of the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava started the journey of applying up-to-date tools and control processes within its own management in order to rank amongst excellent university institutions. In the decision-making process of how to proceed and primarily how to bring the institution inline with the excellent faculties of this type, not only in Slovakia but also within the European Union which Slovakia was associated with in 2004, the following themes have been implemented and are being considered, e. g. dynamic development of an institution in the category of the universities optimal adaptation of the faculty's structure relating to the system of the university's social financing, diversity (Stefankova, Caganova, Moravcik, 2010), multiculturalism (Caganova, Sujanova, Lenhardtova, 2010), up-to-date management models of public institutions (Cambal, Caganova, 2010) and quality control models, etc. The paper does not only deal with evaluating the tools used for the general improvement of the institution from a managerial perspective of the faculty but also from that of employees and governing bodies (university, ministry, rating and ranking agencies) with respect to the results of the last four years, especially in the area of grant fruitfulness, overall development and also the construction of the faculty by the deployment of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) model. By the faculty's preference of the CAF model and its experience from two successful competitions in the framework of the Slovak university institutions is highlighted. Another significant part of the paper includes the analysis of customer satisfaction and the institution's quality research from a viewpoint of employees and students that have carried out several years of research on document development trends on the demarcated way to the institution's excellence. The statistics, analyses, and final comments for decisive quality and economic indices are included. To summarize it, the authors' intention is to share the knowledge and experience of the best practice in how to improve the institutional processes with a focus on the institutional results.

This paper describes some aspects of the current situation of university education in Slovakia within European context. Since 1989, the traditional conservative university environment of Central Europe has undergone a large number of fundamental changes, reforms and other accompanying processes that followed the absence of democracy and academic freedom in the previous period. The authors analyse the structural and organisational changes and their consequences at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology (MTF), one of seven faculties of the Slovak University of Technology (STU). The characteristics of engineering education described in a three-level model reflect changes in the context of harmonization of university education, and support the creation of European Higher Education Area. Consequently, the economic and administrative processes in a scientific-educational institution are mapped from the standpoint of available resources for analytical work, the launching of information systems (IS) in the institution, and establishment of a new platform for information and communication technologies at schools and universities. The experience with the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) model as a comprehensive tool for complex quality management is highlighted. This model was inspired by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model and the German Academy of Speyer model. The CAF model offers a relatively simple insight into working with a comprehensive quality-oriented tool that is primarily focused on customers, citizens and results. CAF may start a long process of quality development, which may lead the candidate towards a prize and recognition, such as "The National Prize of Slovak Republic for the Public Sector."The core of CAF is a self-evaluating tool that gives opportunity to learn more about a particular organization. The following section is dedicated to staff and student opinions, since human factor is critical for the implementation of the quality management model. In the final section conclusions and perspectives are described. The goal is to share experience with professionals in the field.

The article highlights 7th FP project „Improving gender diversity management in materials research institutions“ from the point of view one from 13 project partners and its role in the project, the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology (MTF) STU in Bratislava, Slovakia. The focus is put on the problem of under-representation of women in research and decision making processes and effort to support the institutional culture change for a greater inclusiveness of women scientists in materials research organisations. Finally, the authors would like to exchange and share their Slovak gender issues experience with other colleagues, professionals to contribute for an optimum development of European Research.

In the paper, the implementation of the personalised approach of Technology enhanced learning (TEL) for engineering education is presented and is based on "batch knowledge processing". This bottom up concept takes into account that knowledge is a key element in engineering education and educators work with knowledge when performing their activities. In terms of this, the personalised TEL approach is understood as the "automation" of all the types of activities performed by teachers. For supporting (automating) these activities a multipurpose pre-programmed desktop environment has been developed. It is built on a conventional Relational Database Management System, however, the paradigm of the batch knowledge processing is different from the conventional relational database and has not yet been described or published. Using this tailor made informatics tool the various types of the TEL outputs were worked out, e.g., learning materials for courses of study, internet forums due to better feedback, supporting study libraries at the faculty's server, other personalised applications (internet batch retrieving, advanced searches, virtual "StudyWeb", multilingual support, digitalisation of the printed engineering content and data interlinking with the academic information system, etc.).

In this paper, the personalised 'Technology enhanced learning' approach for engineering education support is presented based on the 'batch knowledge processing' and automation of the teacher's activities. The automation is performed via a multipurpose pre-programmed desktop environment which has been self-developed at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology. It works on the teacher's computer as a knowledge editor. This bottom up concept takes into account that knowledge is a key element when performing teachers' activities. The various outputs were generated for the teaching support, e.g., learning materials for courses of study and a 'Study WEB' with a supporting library, tailored internet forums, and other personalised applications respectively (internet batch retrieving, advanced search, multilingual support and digitalisation of the engineering content). The knowledge editor and the batch knowledge processing paradigm gives much reference to many other works and published literature in the area when regarding an applied personalised approach.