InnovaT Conference: consolidates international teaching network in innovative teaching
“We have established a network of Higher Education professionals, a community, and we plan to attract more teachers to our network. We will continue our journey towards excellence in teaching and learning,” stressed Clarissa Maierhofer, part of the InnovaT coordination team.
The University of Piura in Peru hosted the “InnovaT International Conference: Innovative Teaching in Higher Education” in June as part of the InnovaT Project – Innovative Teaching Across the Continents, of Erasmus +, mainly aimed at enriching innovation in education.
The event featured presentations, ignite sessions, posters, and workshops by participants from the universities of the consortium in Chile and Peru, and other international institutions, in face-to-face and hybrid mode, who shared experiences, gained new knowledge and collaborations to jointly design the future of innovation in teaching and learning.
The topics addressed were geared toward technological tools applied to education, innovative education connected to industry, successful teaching experiences and practices, and university education and training of professionals for the company of the 21st century, among others linked to good practices in Higher Education.
“The conference was an opportunity to meet face-to-face and discuss topics on innovative teaching methods and allowed us to foster personal relationships and discover common research interests, thus laying the groundwork for future collaborations,” said Clarissa Maierhofer, part of the InnovaT coordination team.
In this line, the attendees valued this space for interaction and collaboration provided by the conference. “Academia is based on exchange, feedback, and joint work. Therefore, these types of experiences are key. They give us a new perspective on how to move forward together. The central pillar of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is collaboration and working together is the current and future paradigm. Therefore, InnovaT is framed in this sense,” said Oscar Jerez Yáñez, associate director for Higher Education at Laspau, Harvard University, who participated as one of the keynote speakers in the presentation “Innovation in Higher Education and Sustainable Development.”.
Although this event represents a culminating milestone of the InnovaT Project, after three years of implementation, it is not the end point of this initiative, on the contrary. “We have established a network of professionals in Higher Education and a community, we plan to attract more teachers to our network and share experiences on teaching and learning methodologies and intensify virtual collaboration between universities. We will continue our journey towards excellence in teaching and learning,” Maierhofer stressed.
The community of education professionals mentioned by Maierhofer will serve as a marketplace, where emerging new technologies and innovations are introduced and the application of these in the Community is discussed. “In the future, the use of technology will be indispensable, it allows to enable educational processes, but it also empowers new educational models, which would not be feasible without its use,” said José Escamilla de los Santos, Director of Educational Innovation at Tecnológico de Monterrey, who was one of the two main presenters with his conference “Transforming the future of education.”
In addition to this conference, the InnovaT Project to date has participated in 56 regional, national, and international conferences related to education.
