According to the agreement between Universidad Politécnica Salesiana and the Planning and Sustainable Management of Rural Development Research Group-GESPLAN-(Grupo de Investigación en Planificación y gestión Sostenible del Desarrollo Rural-Local GESPLAN) from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, in october 40 of UPS's best students attended a course on Project Management as part of the activities organized by the CO-Working STARTUPS Project. 

Dr. Igancio de los Rios, from GESPLAN, said: "during these two days at UPS-Cuenca we have created 7 groups that are now working on real project ideas and during the course we have guided them to create their projects as a team by integrating competences according to the methodology of the course. Therefore, the case studies will be their own projects. It is something that we changed during the course, therefore it's a new modality.

The topics in the course cover all the learning objectives found in the universal certification system for professionals in Project Management, according to NCB-IPMA standards:

-    Technical competencies: 20 basic elements of competency for project management are considered. 

-    Contextual competencies: 11 elements of competency for project management related to the context of a project and the organization.

-    Behavior competencies:  there are 15 attitued and skills that should be developed for project management. 

Students will now be able to apply what they learnt during the activities that they will carry out during the Co-Working STARTUPS project. To foster students' work, UPS-Cuenca recently opened two new spaces for those who took part in the International Congress on Research, Scientific Production and University Publishing (Congreso Internacional Investigación, Producción Científica y Editorial Universitaria).The aim of these spaces are to provide people with favorable working conditions to create, discuss and develop new ideas and innovative projects which are created with the help of different people who get involved. 

Juan Pablo Salgado, Head of Research at UPS, said that in UPS-Quito and Guayaquil they will also build spaces to foster student participation. 
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