Higher education must promote sustainable development and train citizens committed to the planet, Yuma Inzolia

In 2017 UNESCO IESALC attended the Education 2030 conferences organized by Virtual Educa, a space in which it agreed to promote these processes of dialogue to foster the sustainable development of our universities and their transformation.

The “Encuentro Internacional Transformación Digital en la Educación Superior: Desafíos y Oportunidades”(International Meeting Digital Transformation in Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities) held in Lima in a hybrid format, served to present the advantages and disadvantages of a new educational ecosystem, marked by the COVID-19 pandemic. UNESCO IESALC’s participation was led by Yuma Inzolia, global academic coordinator, who shared new perspectives on the windows of opportunity offered by this new era of change due to the pandemic. For example, the role of social networks in the learning process, which can be seen as accelerators for the decentralization of universities, marked by the innovation of hybrid and blended models.

“We have promoted the New Regional Convention for the recognition of studies and degrees in the region, which finds in the micro-credentials a tool to strengthen the universities and the internationalization in the region,” said Inzolia.

In this context, she recommended to strengthen the change to hybridization and rethink university models. In the USA, 21% of universities are considering a hybrid return: 34% would be online and 23% would have a face-to-face approach. “We can say that the global approach to #HigherEducation is based on the migration towards semi-face-to-face in a more inclusive transformation process,” she said.

Another window of opportunity is the competence of teachers through the inverted classroom, accompanying teachers in their role as facilitators of learning. Focus must be placed on problem solving, collaborative work, and debate. “Only in this way can we form critical and committed citizens in face of the challenges that lie ahead of us”.

“We must promote sustainable development and train citizens committed to the environment through the use of transformative pedagogies based on values. We must also take advantage of technologies and the personalization of learning that artificial intelligence allows us”.

Watch the video of the meeting here. 

Photo by Andreas Kretschmer at Unplash.