Driving institutional change: challenge based learning for the University of the 21st Century

Abstract

[EN] The main challenge faced by higher education is overcoming the gap between university education and the demands of society and the professional world. This gap cannot be accounted for merely in terms of a shortcoming in the relationship between the competencies of academic programmes and the real training needs of lifelong learners, but also involves the mismatch between the design of training models and students' expectations. The UOC has launched the PLA-Niu project in response to this problem. It aims to transform the subjects in the University's programmes into activities designed strictly based on competencies which are aimed at resolving challenges inspired by the professional sphere; to implement a new means of selecting, designing and managing learning resources based on content curation for learning, organising it into specific aggregators for each activity; and to provide a system that enables the production and organisation of training in an agile, flexible and personalisable manner. In this paper, we set out the experience of applying the PLA-Niu in the University as a whole, and present its characteristics, explain the strategies and measures involved in its implementation, and share the reflections of those involved from a critical perspective.