Training and innovation in higher education

How are we today in terms of training and innovation in higher education? It is the question that will have to continue to be asked. The answers seem to point out that, although the environments or contexts and the processes of knowing, learning, helping to learn and research have changed a lot, the results are still not very noticeable. On the other hand, the speed and circulation of information is demanding a different conception and attitude of the training and research processes based on new methodologies. It is at this point, where innovation does not seem to have made much progress although there are ideas that are beginning to make their way and may have an impact that, at this moment, is not yet very visible.

In any case, the emergence of new models of teaching and learning in higher education can now be seen based, above all, on new forms of access to information and its management in new knowledge, as well as its communication and face-to-face sharing. and the distance that the new socio-cultural and technological contexts have come to facilitate.

For that, true autonomy, respect for diversity without losing sight of the sense of unity, openness, connection, personal, social and cultural connectivity, work, effort, commitment, organization and management, collaboration and sharing, taking advantage of all possibilities that new information and communication technologies offer and make available on a global scale. Great challenges, possibilities and risks are within the reach of humanity that training, innovation and research in higher education cannot fail to consider and bear in mind in its action. For this transformation to happen in reality, a new mentality is needed that is open to the most advanced and consistent ideas that scientific and technological progress is making possible, as well as a new way of being and acting enlightened, rigorous and demanding that guarantees the its implementation and realization.

The most advanced and innovative trends in teaching and learning seem to go in this direction clearly, but it will be necessary to encourage, develop, consolidate and optimize them. In this immense task, the magical power of knowing and learning with intelligence, emotion and desire, work and personal, social and professional involvement is the sine qua non for your success. However, it will be necessary to clarify and encourage the profound meaning of this action of knowing and learning that crosses and shapes all human activity. It is also at school and, above all, at school that this work should be done with students. For this to happen, in reality, the strategies, the methods of knowing, learning and investigating must be deeply rethought and, perhaps, changed.

If we want to achieve higher levels of organization, resource management and productivity in our societies, the great work will have to be done in the institutions of initial and continuous training throughout life, in the multiple and diverse workplaces involving the largest number of people. valid and for as long as possible. Only then will people be richer and be able to distribute wealth more justly and equitably, raising as much as possible the levels of possibilities and well-being of all, or at least the greatest number. The high percentages of poverty that tend to increase nowadays only prove that there is something to be done in depth and in extension with calm, serenity and rigor to which the protest, the manifestos and the useless noise do not add anything besides being a huge loss of time and energy that could be used in a much more serious and effective way.

What comes to us from reading the new contexts and demands of an increasingly globalized world and disconnected from ethical references that guided it in the not-too-distant past, tells us that it is necessary to rethink the training of citizens at all levels of a a more autonomous, in-depth, collaborative, intelligent, free and responsible way using all available resources that, today, are facilitated by scientific, technological and sociocultural progress. This seems to be the great challenge facing all actors in education, socialization, training, research, culture and scientific and technological development. But the most important and decisive is knowing how to find your human balance between technological advances and their fair appropriation and articulation with the development of ethical and cultural values as well as your openness to others in the sense of personal, professional and social optimization in pursuit of his great adventure, in space and time, on the way to its realization.

It is not enough, therefore, more science, culture and technology, a truly human and solidary, demanding, rigorous and tolerant ideology is needed. This is what we could call wisdom. Our time needs more intelligent, free and responsible sages who help humans to become more human against a barbarism that advances and globalizes in an unrestrained and scandalous way covered by speeches of a politically correct that only masks the inertia of a blatant and intolerable status quo.

It is not enough to ask for more resources for training and research in higher education, it was necessary to change minds, contexts and behaviors. I don't know if this is happening despite enormous scientific and technological progress and if people are truly more enlightened, autonomous, responsible. The news that comes to us from different quarters at national, international and global levels is diffuse, inaccurate and, often, contradictory.

What is noteworthy and curious is that the actors of yesterday who, in the first line, were striving for a new educational concept and new ways of knowing, learning and educating for citizenship, suffered attacks of all kinds and even disloyal to those who came from the so-called hardest sciences. Today, it seems that these same concepts are beginning to be brought up for discussion and debate by these other actors in the field of education and training with a large audience and acceptance. People pass by but good ideas and scientific conclusions are being served although by other pedagogical approaches and other faces from different scientific and technological areas.

Indeed, a new man is being born and, perhaps, configuring this new wave as a society of the "commoners" that the new information and communication technologies have made possible and the older ones learn together with the new generations and become younger , more spontaneous and uninhibited, forcing the spaces, equipment, buildings and educational and training institutions at all levels to become more dynamic, resilient and adequate to the new demands of knowing, learning, researching, communicating and acting.