Teacher Groups: a proposal for educational innovation

UPS, lunes 6 noviembre 2017
Father Javier Herrán, UPS president during his talk
Father Javier Herrán, UPS president during his talk
 
In order to create new and promising spaces for the teaching – learning process there was a meeting in order to present projects that were created by professors to improve processes at UPS based on good practices of educational innovation.
 
This proposal represents a response to the new challenges and demands of higher education. The need to respond to the demands of education in the era of information and communication encourages the opportunity to work together through teacher groups.
 
There is a total of 21 groups made up by 87 professors in the university's branch campuses in Cuenca, Guayaquil and Quito; they have presented their work and experiences in the following categories:
 
- Best methodological / didactic proposal
 
- Best educational experience
 
- Best Virtual learning environment
 
The guidelines for the presentation of works were based on the academic and investigative interest of the professors, as well as several guidelines for planning such as: optimization of academic processes, planning and study material, evaluation as a learning tool, and teacher groups as incubators of Educational innovation proposals. The experiences were presented in UPS's branch campus in Cuenca, and on a virtually in Guayaquil and Quito, at different times. 
 
For Jorge Altamirano, coordinator of the project "Teacher Groups", these initiatives are important because "they are part of the institutional academic management, and favor the daily pedagogical practice among students and teachers". The objective is to strengthen and vindicate the educational processes through the optimization of time, inputs, didactic material, assisted learning, etc., expanding the educational innovation and the work culture among peers.