Educating global competitors

Education is changing radically. Digital culture and new global challenges are shaking the foundations of long established learning traditions. These changes have strong consequences for teachers and students alike. I will recall here my recent experience.
Classes re-oriented
My concern preparing a new course has to do with the traditional knowledge that students have to learn. Something new with this? Yes, nowadays students have different profiles and interests, and those should be beared in mind. It is not the same teaching a second degree than expectations from young and unemployed students. Beside this, there are two new components: The first component has to do with the need to engage with firms and institutions -students in my courses do this through project based development and digital portfolios. The second component has to do with fostering a new attitude.

Digital portfolios: Focused on the student

The digital portfolios are minimum requirements demanded to students. These are digital artifacts -built up personally and also working in groups- that they are guided to develop on relevant issues and with a thought on a possible client, either a firm or institution in mind.

Digital portfolios might include reports openly published on Slideshare, learning to curate information on a specific topic through Delicious, Scoop.it…, a professional branding reflecting the work done in the class (from a blog, to a Linkedin and other social media profiles). Bolonia, allotting 50% of time for practical work in the classes is an excellent incentive to built up on this system. Let´s see some examples:

Restoring the Spanish education based on the Brazilian example 2012-2022 is a report prepared by Maider Pérez de Heredia, @maiderpzh. Maider is also author of this digital magazine on the subject. Her report was prepared for McKinsey&Company.

The need for a common fiscal policy in Eurozone has been drafted by Julio Mateo, @juliomcastillo, who is also the author of this digital magazine on the subject.

– Jorge Nuñez @GEEorgx worked on Sino-Congolese relations in Africa: a win-win policy? preparing a report for: Oxford University China Africa Network (OUCAN) among others. This is his digital magazine.

– Cristina Muñoz @FromCristina worked on Política europea sobre cuotas de mujeres en los consejos de administración de las empresas: Policy Networks and this digital magazine.

– Anaïs Leiner, @AnasL3 worked on “Política pública de agua en Francia” and this digital magazine prepared for the Office National de l’eau et des Milieux Aquatiques, Ile de France.


What do students get following this approach?

They develop specific open content, some of a very high quality. Students from political science and international relations degrees using their digital portfolios have been invited to join granted programs with firms such us McKinsey&Co; other students got very good reviews from firms such as Oracle or Mastercard. Some focus on NGOs or developing a project of their own.

Positive leadership, initiative and passion at heart

Artifacts and quality are not enough. Given the same quality of work, students really effective targeting possible clients or interested stakeholders develop during the course skills having to do with an entrepreneurial attitude, being positive towards total connectivity, and constant innovation.

Very important parts of the ecuation have to do with fostering initiative, creative capacity, passion and positive leadership.

In collaboration with innovative universities

I have tested this method in collaboration with innovative universities, together with a program aimed at the global branding of the institution. This has been the case, for instance, with UNIA (Universidad Internacional de Andalucía), were I developed a course to qualify professors teaching postgraduate courses to use digital tools for teaching purposes.

The work with 20 motivated and very competent students added up more than 6.000 cites about the university in the Web over a period of seven weeks.

This course, taught on line, was devised together with Prof. Jean-Charles Blondeau @jeancharles, and had as special guests: professors from both sides of the Atlantic, including Dolors Reig @DReig, Esperanza Román @ERomanMe, Cecilia Gañán de Molina @ceciliaganan; Philippe Boukozba @heuristiqment, and Juan Domingo @JuanDoming as dinamizers.

All in all, the general purpose is to contribute to develope skills to prepare students to become professionals for a new brave world. I leave you this presentation on some of the topics we do analyze in our practical classes, and I very much welcome comments and suggestions on it:

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  • Jorge

    A veces la teoría se queda “algo coja” si no se complementa con maneras de entender el trabajo universitario como una oportunidad emprendedora o un laboratorio de ideas más que una imitación de los “clásicos”. Un equilibrio entre teoría científica y recursos y herramientas prácticas puede dar buenos resultados. Un saludo