Educational Innovation Webinar Cycle Ends with High Attendance
“The webinars have helped me understand the characteristics of current educational settings, the role the teacher should play, and the available resources,” says Claudia Quiroz, professor of Architecture at the Catholic University of San Pablo de Arequipa.
As part of the Innovation T project, which brings together European and Latin American universities to train innovative teachers, the webinars ended on a high note. These were carried out in a pandemic context that has brought new challenges for teachers, who in recent months have faced uncertainty over their classes and how to perform them optimally using digital tools.
All efforts were focused on addressing current Covid-19 issues and challenges, alongside learning innovative teaching tools in the university context, involving mainly professors and university associates in Peru and Chile.
The webinars were comprised of four series, with a total participation of 860 teachers, “We have a high level of participation and to motivate the teachers, we intertwined several tools within the webinars: Etherpad, Mentimeter, Padlet, Jamboard, and Poll Everywhere. The teachers presented the tools through five themes: platforms, exhibition, collaboration, reflection, and evaluation. For each of these topics, the teachers indicated tools they could use, and, at the end of each topic, an interactive activity was presented,” says exhibitor Carlos Alario Hoyos of the Carlos III University in Madrid.
Meanwhile, attendees noted that since the beginning of the pandemic it has been difficult to maintain interaction with their students through screens, but that the resources provided in the webinars have helped them bridge this gap, “The relationship with the students was easier to build in person, doing this online is quite a challenge, so gaming and online collaboration seen in the webinars is very useful,” emphasizes Jhony Velásquez Delgado, Professor of Business Administration at the Catholic University of San Pablo.
A participant from the University of Piura adds, “I have moved from delivering a traditional lecture to developing sessions using real-life real business situations that students are able to contextualize, analyze, discuss their opinions, and not just memorize concepts. The resources I have been using include the platform developed by the University (Udep virtual), Zoom and Microsoft Teams, for studies and case discussion in class, and to strengthen learning and interaction,” says Mariela del Pilar Quiroz Caballero, Professor of the Accounting and Auditing Program.
Likewise, teachers say that for them, participating in the webinars was a paradigm shift, in which, beyond having an extensive bank of knowledge, they need the ability to innovate and create conditions for their students to continue learning in diverse situations and contexts, “webinars have helped me understand the characteristics of current educational settings, the role the teacher should play, and the available resources. Also, to better estimate worktime during and outside the virtual classroom,” says Claudia Quiroz, professor of Architecture at the Catholic University of San Pablo de Arequipa.
Similarly, participants of the University of Santiago de Chile, highlighted the advantages of ICT in the classroom, in order to bring the lesson format closer to education 3.0, “This approach involves incorporating active collaboration tools for learning and interacting with students through applications, such as using the Mentimeter to ask live questions, which can lead to innovations in assessment, such as online questionnaires,” Paul Paste, professor of the Faculty of Technology, says.
Finally, the teachers appreciated the opportunity given by their home universities to participate in the webinars and hope to continue to deepen educational innovation in the upcoming InnovaT project activities.
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