Summary
The advances that are experienced in Cuban Education and in particular at the higher level is largely due to the capacities created to assimilate, understand and generalize the knowledge and technologies that are derived from Research-Development-Technological Innovation (R&D + IT). When the changes in the Science System begin in Cuba, innovation becomes a dimension that projects transcendental changes not only in the conceptual order, but also in the strategic and in particular oriented towards the need to strengthen the links between the scientific sector and services. The introduction of the concept of technological innovation in the improvement of the educational teaching process in the training of professionals constitutes the objective of our work.
Introduction.
As changes in the presentation of the Science and Technological Innovation System (SCIT) begin in Cuba, the term technological innovation becomes a dimension that projects transcendental changes not only in the conceptual order, but also in the strategic and particularly oriented towards the need to strengthen ties or unify actions between the scientific sector and production and services.
Although methodological scientific work and pedagogical profile research support the improvement of the educational teaching process and specifically the training of professionals, technological innovation projects are not presented as a systematic practice dimension for obtaining new or improved services, processes or, in short, professionals with qualities, knowledge and skills that express higher levels of performance and competence in correspondence with the demands of the environment, current scientific technological advances and the ability to understand, transform and lead changes in a life project.
The introduction of the concept of technological innovation in the improvement of the educational teaching process and in particular in the training of professionals constitutes the objective of our work.
Development.
The very characteristic of our changing world calls for a training that is adjustable to these challenges, therefore the flexibility of the curriculum is essential, the inclusion of new technologies, contemplating new forms of multidisciplinary analysis of the object of study, giving the student greater participation in the Curricular decisions that allow better adaptation to their needs and thus greater use of their potential, are tasks that must necessarily be undertaken if we really want education to stimulate and serve social development.
The advances that are experienced in Cuban Education and in particular in the higher level is largely due to the capacities created to assimilate, understand and generalize the knowledge and technologies that are derived from Research-Development-Technological Innovation (R&D + IT). However, technological innovation in educational reforms and improvements is not sufficiently known, although without a doubt, it is systematically used in the very improvement required by the educational teaching process, despite not using the projects as a structural and functional cell of the technological innovation does not take advantage of all the potentialities and advantages offered by the action of organized innovation itself.
Technological innovation projects aimed fundamentally, in the case at hand, to obtain new or improved educational and professional processes, services and technologies or graduates with cognitive, attitudinal qualities and more competitive ways of acting, may be the results to be obtained. and in fact they constitute key premises to obtain concrete impacts in the socio-economic transformation of the environment.
Today the assimilation of new knowledge and in particular technologies, methods, tools, new organizational forms, etc., go through a methodological work cycle that in most cases goes through the traditional ways in which it is expressed: Methodological Meetings, Methodological Classes, Methodological Seminars, Open Classes, Class Controls, etc. with the purpose of knowing, understanding and applying the new experiences, however, in the work itself, in most cases the follow-up of the execution of the transformative action or changes to be achieved, much less the impact that must be produced on the skills of students and professionals and in particular on the transformation of the socio-economic scenarios of the environment.In the cases that it is achieved it depends to a great extent on personal initiative and in others, on plans or projects oriented and directed with very specific purposes.
The technological innovation project covers as a system and basic organizational form all the elements that allow managing pedagogical change from the definition of demands, priorities and problems to obtaining the results and impacts of the transformative actions or change that are introduced and investigated and go through the management of information and knowledge, the precepts and categories of strategic projection, planning and experimental design, obtaining and processing information, the selection, preparation and use of human resources, obtaining and access to different forms of financing, the distribution and use of time, the projection and expression of the environmental, social, quality dimension, the introduction and generalization of the results, the measurement of impacts,protection and dissemination of results, etc.
It is not about making the change process more complex, but about systematizing, evaluating and correcting it and ultimately more competitive graduates. A paradigm shift is also evident.
Conditions or premises for the actions of organized innovation.
- The environment for innovation.
Paradigm shift:
Move to a curricular model where KNOWLEDGE predominates.
The development of information technologies:
Its impact on the paradigm shift in information and knowledge management is evident. The student has to prepare to access the information that circulates in the world, he has to be able to understand it, appropriate it and apply it. The teacher must necessarily prepare himself to guide his students, control them and correct them. In this case, the culture of innovation to face this challenge has to be very well accompanied by the consolidation of attitudinal capacities in correspondence with the values that emanate from our society.
Strategic positioning:
It is obtained through the development of knowledge for innovation. Institutions and companies that do not innovate disappear. It is necessary to plan activities and actions in the preparation and training of teachers, as well as in the curricular and extracurricular training of students. Technological innovation projects must constitute a basic tool and a method to be used in the improvement of the educational teaching process and in particular in the training of professionals.
Knowledge of innovation:
Knowledge becomes a key factor of competitiveness, it is the way to achieve efficiency, quality and closely linked to obtaining new or improved services, processes, technologies, etc. It is necessary to project knowledge to achieve positive impacts in the socio-economic transformation of the environment, with more competent professionals, committed to a sustainable development project and capable of demonstrating the viability of the modern company.
Competitive advantages:
They are given by the development and permanent improvement of knowledge for the innovation of human capital, by strategic alliances, by the humanistic nature of the work we carry out, by the quality of the performance and the results of the work, etc.
Human talent:
Cultivate the capacities of human resources, achieve a comprehensive general culture and turn them into people capable of creating, innovating, solving problems, transforming processes, working as a team, making decisions, participating in the execution of a project that benefits the majority and the collective interests.
- Educational Teaching Process (PDE) for Innovation.
The improvement of the educational teaching process must be achieved based on innovation based on skills, demands and development trends. It must operate as an open and flexible system in correspondence with the possibilities and capacities of the students, in permanent interaction with the environment. Its projection is oriented towards a vision of the desired and possible future.
The relationship between mission and vision of the educational teaching process defines the foundations, principles and values in the training of professionals. Strategic positioning is obtained from the development dynamics of the environment, which allows us to anticipate the competition with innovation and quality.
The curricular and pedagogical model is also based on an educational teaching process that promotes vertical and horizontal integration. The work by functions model must be replaced by work by processes, through interdisciplinary teams. Organize academic and educational activity in correspondence with the technological processes of production and services, with the organizational flows of the institutions, where the intermediate goals, the states or stages of the processes, the partial multidisciplinary objectives (by years, semesters, stays, blocks, etc), etc.
The basic or organizational instrument of this approach is the Project. It should constitute the cell for continuous improvement in:
- The educational teaching process Professional training and learning in particular In the preparation and training of teachers, etc.
- Vocational Training.
Train through a permanent innovation process, aimed at:
- Learn from life Learn from life Learn for life Learn to learn
Technological innovation must be a present dimension from the first year of the degree to the last, deepening its characterization, understanding and application as the training progresses.
Given the imprint and demands of technological innovation of a multi and interdisciplinary approach, the main scenario must then be in the integrating discipline of the career, in course and diploma work, in work practice and stays, etc. According to the particular characteristics of each career, the concepts and foundations of technological innovation are linked and to the extent that we propose to achieve changes, which contribute to new or improved qualities and skills of the learner and graduates, we then introduce the project into learning.
Those familiar with the topic of innovation believe that a curricular strategy (transversal contents) should be formed in each career, where most of the subjects are linked.
Below we weigh the distribution of innovation actions by years for agricultural and technical careers:
- First year. The student must know the basic concepts, fundamental principles of technological innovation and identify the technological demands required by the career, supported by the information and knowledge management system. Second year. Specify the priorities framed by technological demands and formulate an innovation strategy to achieve more efficient production and service processes with new or improved products, services, technologies, processes, etc. Prepare a proposal for a project file, endorsed by technological surveillance actions. Third year. Evaluate the development and implementation of the innovation strategy for a professional profile or field of action of the career at least and design a technological innovation project, based on a technological management system. Fourth year.Implement and evaluate an innovation strategy for an occupational profile or career sphere of action and develop a technological innovation project. Fifth year. Develop a technological innovation project, measure impacts, design and evaluate compliance with the comprehensive sustainable development strategy of a company.
- Principles of pedagogy for innovation in vocational training.
The development of knowledge in the educational teaching process is a condition for technological innovation and business positioning in the training of professionals.
Client-subject relationship.
- The curricular and pedagogical design are based on the client-subject relationship. The company and institutions of production and / or services represent the client, in their capacity as bearers and applicants and the subject is the student, as a transforming and builder of knowledge. The client-subject relationship is manifested in the training of professionals. The subject is the main protagonist of learning and the transformations that occur in the professional and occupational profiles related to their career in the environment. Clients are the regulators, who accredit quality to the extent that their participation, satisfaction or dissatisfaction feed back into the system and define the balance and effectiveness of the professional training process and the competitiveness of graduates.The client demands the requirements of products and services, which to a large extent characterize the subject.The subject responds to the needs of society, must be versatile and initiative, with the ability to analyze, synthesize, solve problems, make decisions, operate, innovate, and manage technologies, work in teams, be ethical, and participate in the construction of society.
Intentionality (Why do we train?).
Design and apply a curricular model to achieve comprehensive professional training. Professionals with the capacity for innovative, participatory work, willing and prepared to learn permanently, self-manage knowledge, solve problems in society and highly committed to the welfare of humanity.
Vision (Where do we want to go?).
Adopt a curricular model that promotes the development of human talent, with a comprehensive general culture, with attitudinal, cognitive, productive and innovative capacity to transform and solve multidisciplinary problems that benefit the collective interests and of society in general, linked to reflective participation and a permanent learning, fostered by the construction of knowledge and information management.
Guidelines.
- Know to do:
It is necessary to explain and understand doing in order to transform and innovate it. In the educational teaching process, students must establish links between the time they dedicate to knowing and thinking about what they are going to do, the time to evaluate what they have done and the time to do it.
Who directs the learning? Know-how.
Design must privilege knowledge for the construction of knowledge, decision-making, problem solving and continuous improvement in close relationship with doing, the basis of professional training and productive knowledge.
- Continuous learning:
Concentrate on the study of processes, where the student learns to learn. The constant technological changes make the contents age quickly, so it is necessary to provide students with tools and self-learning methods that allow them to keep up to date and continue learning in their professional lives.
- Knowledge dialogues:
Horizontality in the dialogue of the students with those who know how to do is a key premise to learn and not only depend on the knowledge and teachings of the teacher. Today we need a teacher to coordinate, moderate, guide learning and dialogue with producers, scientists, other professionals, etc., ultimately with those who have knowledge and accumulate experiences in the environment, in the country and in the world.
- Generality- specificity:
Privilege the development of basic and foundation knowledge, which provide a vision of systemic totality, in such a way that the student is able to fully understand the generality and relate it to the specificity either at the level of career, discipline, subject, topic, etc. It then allows a multipurpose training and the subject is able to adapt to any process.
- Didactics of appropriation of knowledge.
Implement didactic strategies that lead to the construction and appropriation of knowledge from the permanent reflection of practice (learning in life), the construction of concepts and the critical recovery of experiences and accumulated knowledge (learning from life).
It is the abstraction of doing that which makes its understanding and explanation possible, the basis of innovative creative knowledge (learning for life).
Without the reflection of the doing, the transformation of the object is impossible, the learning being relegated to the instrumental condition of execution and operation. It is necessary to combine doing and knowing (learning to learn). Example: There are drivers who know how to drive, but cannot drive.
Work (social practice) constitutes a dimension of creation and continuous improvement as it is conceived as an object of permanent reflection and motivation.
Values, ethics are qualities of behavior, of the comprehensive general culture, of the learning methods used in the training process and not simple subjects or themes that are added to the designs to meet those requirements.
Developing vertical and horizontal integration in the career is a premise in the curricular design in the professional training process. Integration not only guarantees a multipurpose training, but also allows the development of skills and knowledge to solve complex and multidisciplinary problems, allows innovation and, to a certain extent, leads to productive knowledge, to change.
Incorporate information and communication technologies to consolidate the role of students in self-management of learning, particularly in information and knowledge management (GIC), through the interaction that exists between sources, pathways access and application of information and knowledge (IC). Not without first seeking the understanding and appropriation of the CI in order to apply it effectively. The role of the teacher attains the highest priority in the orientation, control and correction of learning.
Basic principles of the pedagogical model for innovation.
- Flexible and dynamic model in correspondence with the possibilities and capacity of the students. Promote agility in learning, making more flexible the time to be consumed in the PDE and in correspondence with the academic performance of each one. Prepare the students to practice self-management and management of their learning. Special emphasis is placed on information and knowledge management techniques as a vehicle to prioritize towards learning. The training process is articulated with the solution of territorial problems and in correspondence with technical scientific advances.To provide students with methods and tools of: Intervention, communication, environmental management, quality management, management and technological surveillance, mastering the formulation and execution of technological innovation projects, etc.to facilitate their training, solving problems that contribute to the quality of life of the community, etc.
Some results achieved through organized innovation in student scientific work at the University of Ciego de Ávila, Cuba.
- Irrigation simulation physical mathematical model. (Tutor: Dr. Oscar Brown Manrique, 2000) Technological process for the reduction of mechanical damage of pineapple postharvest. (Tutor: Dr. Lorenzo Dominico Díaz, 2001) Camshaft recovery technology. (Tutor: Dr. Antonio Daquinta Gradaille,) Procedure to analyze the gross profit in hotel facilities. (Tutor: Dra. María Emilia Aspiolea Ahu, 2002-2003). Biological control of the Corn Moth. (Tutor: Dr. Miguel Iparraguirre Cruz, 1999)
Conclusions and recommendations.
The improvement and changes that lead to new or improved educational services, processes, and technologies must be developed through technological innovation projects, as one of the forms of methodological scientific work.
To achieve perfection, the project must be solidified as a basic tool of pedagogical change and to understand, appropriate, apply and measure the impact of the new paradigm that we propose in a process.
Technological innovation must encompass:
The improvement of the educational teaching process.
The training of professionals.
The ways of acting of the teacher.
Information technologies support learning management and consolidate the role of the student in self-management of knowledge.
The categories of strategic planning provide important elements in the management and self-management of learning.
Develop a pedagogical model for innovation: KNOW HOW.
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