Faculty of Engineering and Sciences trained teachers in digital transformation

The virtualization of subjects brings with it various challenges, especially for teachers. Among these, the development of ICT skills for learning, knowledge in didactic strategies for virtual training and articulation between face-to-face and non-face-to-face modalities, in addition to the development of competencies for the instructional design of virtualization.

UFRO Communications.- With a view to promoting and/or strengthening all these competencies and actions, from the Undergraduate Direction of the Faculty of Engineering and Sciences of the University of the Border The course was designed and executedDigital transformation of teaching: instructional design and e-learning didactics”.

This training, aimed at the teaching coordinators of the academic departments of the faculty, was implemented within the framework of the FRO21991 project “Academic strengthening for the continuous improvement of the university’s training programs with a focus on digitization, virtualization, and internationalization.”

Through a work guided by the instructional designer and teacher specializing in didactics and innovation, Mg. Nicole Aedo Barnert, the participants addressed the elements of instructional design, according to the ADDIE model and the quality standards for virtual training; They planned virtual learning experiences, considering the instructional matrix and characteristics of the subject, as well as having the possibility of designing virtual activities for the autonomous and collaborative learning of the students in the UFRO Virtual Campus.

As a whole, all these contents, aimed at supporting the training processes and the academic progression of the students, were worked on under the b-learning modality, over the course of three days.

“Education is changing, therefore, we also have to change the way we teach and this workshop clearly gives us the tools to face the challenges of this new education. We are not teachers, we are engineers who are teaching and we lack these tools, so this training seems very important to me, because it helps us improve the way we deliver knowledge to the students”, highlighted the teaching coordinator of the Department of Chemical Engineering, Dr. María Eugenia González Quijón.

For his part, the teaching coordinator of the Department of Computer Science and Informatics, Mg. Leonel Caviedes Sepúlveda also values ​​this type of training as very important, “because we were able to visualize new strategies and technologies to generate virtual activities to support face-to-face teaching, allowing us to improve subjects that present some critical aspect.”

The FRO21991 project “Academic strengthening for the continuous improvement of the university’s training programs with a focus on digitization, virtualization, and internationalization”, is an institutional initiative led by the Academic Vice Rector of this house of studies, in order to establish an organizational culture based on academic processes of training, research and innovation that ensure quality results. This, through the implementation of institutional mechanisms of bidirectional relationship with the environment, which will generate continuous improvement and the establishment of guidelines, mechanisms and new indicators tending to institutionalize these processes under defined standards.