The ApS-U8 Seville Conference (with the title "Demolishing Walls. The University's commitment to social justice and sustainable development") was organized this year by the universities Pablo Olavide, University of Seville, Loyola Andalucía University and CES Cardenal Spínola CEU.

For two days, both conferences gathered more than 200 participants from Spanish universities and from all over the world, professionals with interest and experience in research and in the application of the ApS methodology in university teaching.

The ApS-U8 Seville conference included plenary lectures. Amongst them, international initiatives were presented, such as “The magic box”, by Prof. Olga Vásquez (University of California-San Diego).

LThe UPF presented the project "UPF Communication Studies in the key of social innovation: teaching initiatives with learning-service methodology in bachelor and master degrees". This activity was designed by the Center for Innovation in Learning and Knowledge (Carmen Hernández Escolano, Mónica Figueras-Maz and Manel Jiménez Morales) and the faculty of UPF’s Comunication Department (Pilar Medina Bravo, Beatriz Garcia Cortés, Rafael Pedraza Jiménez and Josep M. Palau Riberaygua).

Carmen Hernández (CLIK) was in charge of presenting the analysis of how UPF's Communication studies have introduced social innovation dynamics that in most cases have adopted the Learning-Service (ApS) methodology in different contexts.

The study selected 12 social innovation initiatives between 2014-2017 (6 in the field of the Communication studies, 5 of which used the ApS methodology). 50% of the experiences relate to communication. In this sense, the assessment of the faculty of the Communication department on the ApS methodology has been highly satisfactory. 

However, it will be necessary to obtain further students’ evaluation, as well as from the entities and users of the service to identify their perception and obtain improvement indicators for the consolidation of these initiatives.