(Expansion) – Today we hear seemingly novel concepts in higher education. Adjectives such as: face-to-face, online, mixed, hybrid, formal, informal, non-formal, among others, are added to the noun education. The novelties of the new realities of the learning experience include changes in the distribution of the content of the subjects, the use of digital platforms that integrate audio, video, chat, podcast, short messages and more ways to promote communication between students and their teachers.
In fact, it was possible to see from reality the effectiveness of new teaching tools and their impact on training, but limits were also discovered for learners in acquiring knowledge, understanding it, applying it, analyzing it, synthesizing it, evaluating it and promoting it beyond the limits. limits for which they were conceived.
Formal education in Mexico had to be forced out of the classroom due to the pandemic, and young people were driven to learn informally about the daily activities of their lives.
Using social networks for academic purposes became the alternative in which parents could join together to understand the actions of teachers. The short videos, like TikTok, were introduced in micro-teaching strategies to send massive messages about what was expected from the learning activities.
Informality was introduced into formality as a synthesis of support for young university students to advance, despite everything, in their school cycle.
The same happened with non-formal education. The evaluation of labor competencies is introduced into professional practices as an indispensable element of the portfolio of evidence to be evaluated. Observe that the adults in their career were capable not only of knowing and understanding a concept, but also of seeing how it was applied in the reality of the world of work.
The claims of the engineers for accessing the university laboratories or of the Chefs to carry out their cooking practices were added to the demands of the young people in Health Sciences who insistently asked to advance in their clinical practices.
Teaching, as we lived it a couple of years ago, faced tensions and obstacles. For example, the academic model of closed competency-based curricula showed its limit of accessibility to more students. The impotence to move to a higher degree of complexity in the subjects is held back by having to meet the requirements of the foregoing.
The claim that arises is: let’s change to a flexible curriculum that allows me to move forward and choose how. The standardization of career and graduation profiles was confronted with the questions of the schoolboys who said: Why don’t you listen to me? I need to be attended, I don’t want someone to give me a video class on the subject if they are not my teacher.
In this sense, we must see that the current need is to have an education that personalizes the experience. Technology generated a democratization of access to knowledge. The disciples were able to listen to experts in video, audio, content selected on demand from public spaces.
However, those “rockstar” masters don’t interact with them. Likewise, the limits of internet access again segmented students into online and offline . It was shown that more technology and less interaction become a threat to social development, an essential element of education, which is threatened by the integration of new technologies.
It is time to reintegrate into training for the future the best practices of the past, the successes of the present and the essence of academic responsibility with a focus on the person and its orientation to the values that humanize, transform society, respect the environment, they promote knowledge and above all exalt the soul.
This soulful formation is characterized by:
1) Develop scientific knowledge in conjunction with a sustainable awareness of our planet.
2) Promote the integration of new technologies with a social vision of democratization of access to universities.
3) Seek the greatest economic efficiency and the multiplication of capital with a commitment to entrepreneurship that tries to generate more job opportunities.
4) Focus its action on women and their rights on an equal basis with those of men with a sense of impulse to logical intelligence that is supported by emotional intuition.
5) Assume the civic duties of building a more just and fraternal society increasing its vision of transcendence of the human being who acts with passion, emotion, spirit and soul.
6) Prepare young people to survive, get a job and focus them on living life in an extraordinary way in service to their fellow men.
7) Promote an enterprise with a social sense that leads Mexico to develop all regions.
The education of university students must migrate from a fulfillment of criteria of excellence and quality, to which each person, each student, each teacher, each administrator of the university community transcends. Transcending values, promoting human rights, caring for our planet, promoting our society and family.
Editor’s note: Rafael Campos Hernández is Institutional Rector of Aliat Universidades. Follow him on. The opinions published in this column belong exclusively to the author.
