Thus was the first edition of e-Learning Externado

2019 witnessed the birth of e-Learning Externado Week, event convening deans, department heads, academic and administrative coordinators, professors, and students surrounding education, innovation, and technology.

From September 2 to September 6, 2019, we talked and reflected on current trends and the challenges that technology-mediated education faces today. During these five days, educational innovation took the University, and various events directed to the entire Externadista community were held, including micro-workshops, workshops, chats, discussion panels, and information sessions.

The week featured international speakers, such as Joaquín Guerra and Elsa Beatriz Palacios, from the Tecnológico of Monterrey, Mexico. Also attending were prominent national educational personalities, such as Alvaro Galva’s Panqueva, researcher and innovations advisor of the Center for Innovation in Technology and Education – Conecta-TE of the Andes University; Yasbley Segovia, director of the Academia Technology Center of the University of La Sabana; Eulises Domínguez, head of the Center for Teaching Excellence (CEDU) of the Universidad del Norte, and Claudia Villafañe, director of the Externado de Colombia University Virtual Education Center.

The first edition had 158 attendees from the various Externado faculties and departments. Edna Rozo, dean of the Tourism and Hotel Administration Faculty, talked about her experience: “The event was excellent, I only participated the first morning, but it offered me key elements to further strengthen the virtual education proposals we started recently. We learned about the global trends and the role the university must play in these processes.”

Likewise, Giselle Forero, Public Accounting Faculty professor, and coordinator of learning assurance, emphasized the importance of these spaces, as they are geared to “updating the strategies for teachers, and thus, be at the forefront in different pedagogical and technological issues.” She also highlighted the attendance by representatives of other higher education centers at the week’s events: “Learning about the experiences of other universities having already gone through these technological upgrade processes is a reason to continue with the change process we are called to perform.”

Following are some important contributions from the different speakers and panelists who participated in this first edition of the e-Learning Externado Week:

“This is the right time to come up with a flexible, consistent, conscious, systematic system to train our teachers” – Claudia Villafañe, director of the Virtual Education Center, on the advent of the Digital Teaching Route.

“Today we have infrastructures and educational models of the nineteenth, eighteenth, seventeenth century. We have 20th-century teachers and 16th-century students. This is another challenge: how do we converge all in the 21st century? We have to move towards 21st-century institutions” – Joaquín Guerra, Vice Chancellor for Academic and Educational Innovation at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico. Speaker at the event – Conference: Higher Education Innovation and Technologies trends: Challenges and opportunities.

“Working with educational innovation, working with technology, helps us to do things that would have been impossible a few years ago” – Joaquín Guerra, Vice Chancellor for Academic and Educational Innovation at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico.

“We need to move towards more personalized education. We know that human beings learn in different ways and develop in different ways. I cannot expect the 50, the 40 students in my classroom to learn the same way, as we have done for many years. We believe that today, technology can help us make education more personalized” – Joaquín Guerra, Vice Chancellor for Academic and Educational Innovation at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico.

“Innovation is not built in one day. It is something we have to do continuously, working with our teaching faculty for the transformation of the practices they perform every day” – Beatriz Palacios, director of Educational Innovation at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico.

“We cannot continue with the teacher who imparts a formal class, but, on top of that, we must create a living classroom where technology is actually used for the student to build knowledge, so when the student leaves the class, he remains connected with any technological resource that allows him to continue learning” – Eulises Domínguez, head of the Center for Teaching Excellence (CEDU) of the Universidad del Norte.

“I believe that if, as universities, we join forces, we can execute very high impact and power projects, and in this way, be able to respond much more directly to what students need today” – Claudia Villafañe, director of the Virtual Education Center.

Learn more about the events in this first edition. Below are images and videos on the week’s most noteworthy moments. We look forward to having you join us in the second edition in 2020!