UPF Thinkathon: According to young people, what should the University of the future be like?
UPF Thinkathon: According to young people, what should the University of the future be like?
Secondary school students from Catalonia debate what the University´s new educational model should be in UPF.
On Saturday the 2nd of February, the UPF Thinkathon took place at UPF´s Ciutadella Campus. It was organised by the Centre per a la Innovació en Aprenentatge i Coneixement (CLIK). The activity, directed at secondary school students, took place with the participation of the Thinkathon video contest winners, who came from the following schools: Antoni Pous de Manlleu, Virolai de Barcelona, San José de Sant Boi de Llobregat, FEDAC de Cerdanyola and the Instituto Valeria Pujol y Bosch de Premià de Dalt. Furthermore, several UPF students and alumni also attended the event.
CLIK´s director, Manel Jiménez, was in charge of kicking the day off giving young people the opportunity to get to know UPF a bit better and thanking them for their involvement in the Thinkathon. Right from the get-go, the participants found themselves immersed in a series of dynamics to get to know each other and to create the teams that would debate the topics making up EDvolució. With the help of mobile technology, the teams resolved the different stages and collected audio-visual material for the next phase.
Once they had passed all the tests, it was time for the teams to make creative proposals. The groups, through design thinking methodology, worked on the following topics, which are all related to the creation of a new educational model for UPF:
- What should university teaching staff be like?
- What should university spaces and furniture be like?
- Which technologies and equipment should be used in the classrooms?
- What actions should be taken to receive people from other countries?
- What should the ideal professional practices be in a business or organization?
Several proposals emerged, through the prototyping of a model and the creation of a wiki that collected the reflections and images created by each group. The future university, according to the participants of the Thinkathon, should be a university that…
- Renews the skills of its teaching staff with continuous training programs.
- Introduces elements of fun and playfulness into teaching.
- Limits the use of applications such as Facebook or WhatsApp.
- Personalises the evaluation of every student.
- Offers well-tutored work placements, thus creating a link between companies and the university.
- Encourages international mobility through scholarships.
- Arranges open spaces that are interconnected and multifunctional and are adapted to the new needs of the students and the new methods of teaching.
Finally, the vice-chancellor for the management of UPF´s innovation projects, Josep Lluís Martí, proceeded to draw lots for 1000 euros between the teams selected in the video contest. The lucky winners were Nastia Cobos and Albert Pardina from the Virolai school, who participated in the contest with this video.
The EDvolució team highly values the involvement of these young people and will collect their proposals to incorporate them into the project of creating a new educational model for Pompeu Fabra University.
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