1 Project Name: CoLab - Collaborative Laboratory for Social Impact Networks
2 Project Name: Empowerment through Creativity and Collaboration
3 Project Name: Boost Learning Tech to Teach
4 Project Name: Sound and Vision
5 Project Name: Open curriculum
6 Project Name: U-Life: your ever-growing place
7 Project Name: “Green Bridges” from campus to city

Project Name: CoLab - Collaborative Laboratory for Social Impact Networks

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Carlos Letts

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

Allows our students to take on real social challenges from close communities, helping to meet the unfulfilled demands of citizens, while managing the knowledge each experience delivers, and taking full advantage of additive printing / crafting technologies.

Description

CoLab is a space that could handle the projects for 4 different faculties at UPC: Business, Engineering, Design and Architecture, as well as institutional Social Responsibility initiatives. It is a simplified, less expensive version of the current FabLab facility operating at the Monterrico campus (1 of 4). The spatial conception of this Lab resembles the two-side design of the brain: a rational and an emotional hemisphere, a thinker and a doer profile. Half of the lab is devoted to research and testing; the other, to crafting and 3D printing. It is considered as a further improvement the implementation of media / audiovisual tools.

Stakeholders served

Current UPC students (all faculties)
Local government
Civic agents / community

Key Milestones

December 2022: Close strategic alliance between local gov, sandbox and UG course for a 23-1 term challenge. Funding / paid partnership is being arranged..
March 2023: Acquisition & Implementation of hardware, tools
June 2023: Results of first challenge taken during 23-1
September 2023: 3D Fair Fest
December 2023: Acquisition of Media Tools
March 2024: Deployment of 3D Media Platform

Project Name: Empowerment through Creativity and Collaboration

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Maria Pia Felipa Ibarra

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

I hope to bring a positive impact in students’ learning experience. It is important for my department because they have noticed there is a necessity about soft skills in students. And it would be important to my Fellows because they would improve their learning experience and academic performance.

Description

Empowerment through Creativity and Collaboration is a series of workshops. There are going to be monthly sessions about creativity skills and leadership throught design thinking environment. Every session will be co-facilited by me and Faculty members from different fields in order to talk about their journeys to empowerment. Architecture students will participate voluntarily. Architecture students will bring the projects they are working at the moment to share ideas, apply what they learnt in the last session and receive feedback from the expert and eventually, from their peers.

Stakeholders served

Architecture students
Other students who are interested in Creativity and Collaboration

Key Milestones

December 2022: Collect information about creative challenges from students
March 2023: Interviews with students and alumni.
June 2023: Organize, design and test the sessions
September 2023: Involved students and faculty into the project
December 2023: Receive opinion from students
March 2024: Start implementing the sessions

An Innovation Portfolio

Data about creative challenges from students of Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas.
Podcasts, career workshops and extracurricular workshops guide.
Survey results from students before, during and after implementing the sessions

Project Name: Boost Learning Tech to Teach

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Shirley Vanessa Villanes Borja

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

I’m an IT Professional so learning tech tools to teach was easy for me but most of my colleagues are using only PPT and don’t have the same results as in a presential way. I want to find a way for Faculty to learn tech tools and apply them rapidly.

Description

About 4K of Faculty are facing the everyday challenge of virtual sessions about complex subject matters, and most of them use only PowerPoints. This has a negative impact on quality education and on the student learning process, putting at risk the skills and competencies they must achieve to successfully face the labor market. I propose implementing a support model for Faculty taking advantage of the curiosity, experience, and quick adaptability of digital native generation teachers (34% of faculty), so they’d gather new tools, use them, and share knowledge and experience with others (66% of faculty) who, due to their generation, have a different speed of technological adoption. It'll reduce time on adoption promoting the use of a virtual educational environment, it’ll increase education quality looking for students will be prepared for a world of work that’s also in virtual mode. It’d be sustainable over time since new generations will always serve as support for previous generations.

Stakeholders served

Faculty Staff of Undergratuate and Working Adults Programs
Academic Program Directors
Educational Innovation University department (Sponsor)
Educational Quality University department

Key Milestones

December 2022: Report of Faculty quantitative research of present situation
March 2023: Prototype MVP Model
June 2023: Experiment Results (some selected course-teachers)
September 2023: Model 1.0 implemented for 1rst group of course-teachers
December 2023: Report of Results
March 2024: Model 1.1 implemented for next group of course-teachers

Project Name: Sound and Vision

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Daniel Flores Bueno

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

This is an audiobook platform that provides a channel for accessing information from books worked on in class.

Description

This is like a version of Spotify, but of academic books. Texts worked on in a humanities course have been digitized and students are encouraged to actively listen to them, so that they can then develop a video summary.

Stakeholders served

Students
Professor
Authors

Key Milestones

December 2021: Digitize all books read for a one humanities course and publish them like a podcast.
March 2022:Build an open repository with learning materials constructed by the students, to help their peers with the discussion around the topics read and listening in podcast.
June 2022:Develop research to measure the impact of the podcast and open repository of student-developed learning materials.
September: Extend the project to the entire humanities area.
December 2022:Develop research to measure the impact of the podcast and open repository of student-developed learning materials to the entire humanities area.
March 2023:Publish the results in a scientific journal

An Innovation Portfolio

Podcast Chanel: https://open.spotify.com/show/5PXghgWHncvFHoHrMYb2Mv?si=-Zp5kSxdQSONEgJ_vmoEaw&dl_branch=1
Repository under construction https://www.reddeinvestigadores.com/
Slides and facilitators guides under construction

Project Name: Open curriculum

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Jorge Bossio

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

Open curriculum will allow students to reach the knowledge and experiences of teachers without pre-established limits. Offers students and teachers flexibility and motivation to have the teaching-learning experience of their dreams

Description

Traditionally the curriculum is pre-established. The courses, the teachers, the schedules, the contents: everything is fixed and it is difficult to change. The model is "one size fits all". The pandemic has shown us the value of flexibility and the value that comes with free choice. The Open Curricula initiative seeks to incorporate micro-credentials for credits into the university curriculum, orienting the curriculum towards the development of competencies while giving the student freedom to choose the subject, duration and modality of the courses that are part of their training. Being an open offer, teachers from all over the world can offer courses to the university, and university teachers can offer courses to the world. A pilot of this initiative began by the end of 2020 with the C4C - Coursera for COVID program in which 3,000 students participated. The initiative seeks to scale this experience to all academic programs and reach 60,000 students at the university.

Stakeholders served

President Edward Roekaert, Academic VicePresident Milagros Morgan, Deans, Academic Directors
Faculty members
Undergraduate Students, Working Adult Students, Alumni

Key Milestones

December 2021: Obtain approval of the initiative from the authorities
January 2022: Selection of micro-courses and communication to students and teachers
March 2022: RFP for new online Coursera-style courses
March 2022: Implement list of elective courses grouped in minors
July 2022: Impact evaluation and student satisfaction
December 2022: Escalation of the initiative towards the other own minor programs
March 2023: Full implementation of the initiative in internal programs. Start of the external offering of online coursera-style courses.

An Innovation Portfolio

Project plan and business case
Students interviews
Survey results
Teaching Guides and tutorials
List of implemented courses

Project Name: U-Life: your ever-growing place

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Silvana Balarezo

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

University is rapidly moving from face-to-face to virtual, we started the process a few years ago but the pandemic has accelerated the need of such transformation. We know that University Life goes beyond just taking classes. Thus, if we want to transform the university experience, we need a platform that promotes university services such as social interaction, diversity, multiculturalism, co-creation and innovation. With collaborative and socializing spaces.

Description

As of August 2022, the UPC has a space to promote the UPC community, now students have a place to meet, socialize and create extra-academic communities, interest groups and clubs to strengthen University Life. Since the beginning of the emergency due to the pandemic in March 2020, many freshman students had not had any contact with the university, the services and did not have any new friends. All they knew about were the Virtual Classroom, class sessions and course activities. Therefore, there was a need for an open space and free time outside of class, which would allow them to establish links and share other activities that contribute to their training in an integral way.

The Virtual Campus platform is a simulated replica of the face-to-face campuses, courtyards, corridors, library, sports areas, study cubicles and group work, which makes them live an experience much closer to that of a face-to-face campus. There are also services such as: student care, tutorials, psycho-pedagogical counseling, vocational guidance, and even a prayer or meditation center.

In the Virtual Campus, there are also spaces for specific groups of students and teachers such as communities of gamers, Blackboard experts’ groups, mentors (students that helps other students), musicians, mathematicians, historians, teachers' room, etc., This is, virtual communities of collaboration and interaction, where students and teachers learn, exchange and share knowledge in a transparent way and that also invite the entire university community to join and share as well. In these spaces you can view the different events that run simultaneously, talks, fashion design events, audiovisuals, exhibitions, among others. In other words, all UPC events are integrated and vibrate under its identity.

A first example of the use of the Virtual Campus at its basic level would be the freshman reception event and the subsequent end-of-cycle parties. Hackathons are also created with students and teachers for the development of various projects and ideas. This virtual world is accessed from the Virtual Classroom platform (Blackboard Learn).

Stakeholders served

Freshman and general students
Professors, Teachers, tutors, AAD
Staff and academic leaders

Key Milestones

December 2021: MVP: Launch of the virtual campus with the end-of-cycle party and about 3 basic services (eg. student mentoring, teaching community, navigability, and socialization), on the Monterrico Campus.
March 2022: Launch of the 4 campuses and the "Freshmen” reception event
June 2022: Launch of new features such as: gamer communities, communication students, Musicians, etc. Digital FabLabs with VR / AR / MR, Start Up UPC online, among others
September 2022: Hackathon with students and teachers from different universities to add new functionalities and college week celebration
December 2022: End of years party 2022 with live concerts and other social activities.
March 2023: Welcome to the beginning of the cycle promoting the registration of all new 2022 students (new enrollments and students in general), launching new services.

An Innovation Portfolio

Strategic project plan.
Document of the project design process (empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping and testing).
Project construction document, schedule of activities, methodology (agile), selection of tools.
Implementation, follow-up and monitoring strategies.
Satisfaction and result surveys.

Project Name: “Green Bridges” from campus to city

Project by Faculty Innovation Fellows Candidate Adriana Aleman

Why is this project important to you, your department, & your Fellows?

This project is important for me because I see the lack that exist in the sustainable field. Also, Green Bridges is vital to address the urgent need for environmental awareness and sustainability in education and daily life, fostering a positive impact on our environment and future.

Description

In the contemporary landscape, sustainability stands as a paramount concern intricately connected to our environment. Yet, the crucial importance of this matter often eludes many, including students, educators, and the general populace. This is precisely where “Green Bridges” steps in. With this project I want to be dedicated to instilling sustainability at the core of education and daily life. By meticulously crafting sustainability-focused curricula and integrating eco-conscious activities, empowering students and teachers alike to bring environmental awareness to their homes and communities. The mission is to cultivate a positive environmental impact through comprehensive initiatives, such as greening campuses, establishing sustainable gardens, and conducting cutting-edge research on sustainability issues. “Green Bridges” serve as a dynamic bridge between individuals and a more sustainable future.

Stakeholders served

Students
Professors
Familiars,Relatives & Communities

Key Milestones

December 2023: Develop Strategies
March 2024: Curricula Development
June 2024: Eco-conscious Activities
September 2024: Benefits of Sustainable Gardens through quotidian life
December 2024: Positive impact: tracking project
March 2025: Spread the voice: Show it to your community

An Innovation Portfolio

Sustainability-Focused Curricula: Detailed curriculum plans outlining sustainability courses and modules designed for educational institutions.
Educational Slides: Presentation materials for educators, including slides that cover various sustainability topics and their integration into existing coursework.
Facilitator's Guides: Guides to assist teachers and facilitators in effectively delivering sustainability-focused content and activities.
Schedules: Documentation detailing the schedule and flow of sustainability workshops, webinars, and events.
Eco-Conscious Activities: A collection of engaging activities designed to promote environmental awareness and sustainable practices among students and community members.
Worksheets and Handouts: Educational materials such as worksheets, handouts, and resources for use in sustainability-focused classes and workshops.
Green Campus Initiatives Handbook: Guidelines and best practices for implementing green initiatives on educational campuses.
Sustainable Gardens Blueprint: A blueprint and guide for creating and maintaining sustainable gardens on school grounds and within communities.
Research Reports: Documentation of research conducted on sustainability issues, offering data-driven insights and solutions for addressing environmental challenges.
Impact Assessment Reports: Reports detailing the positive environmental impact achieved by “Green Bridges” initiatives, including reduced carbon emissions, increased environmental awareness, and sustainability practices in communities and educational institutions.