UDP Internacional

19 January 2023

The Collaborative Online International Learning project was carried out in conjunction with the University of Girona and was led by the academic Felipe Kong.

Between October and December 2022, more than 30 second-year students of Basic Education Pedagogy from the Diego Portales University were part of the Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project, carried out in conjunction with the University of Girona (UdG), from Catalonia .

Felipe Kong, academic in charge of the project, commented that, for him, “the learning of the COIL project is mediated by an enriching experience and that, in addition, it is perceived (by all) as an opportunity to broaden the broad world view and dynamic. It is a reflection that I make in light of the process lived, from a somewhat confusing beginning to a profound conclusion full of virtues for the professional and personal life of our students. The foregoing, considering the importance of the role that teachers play in this new world”.

For Catherine Rebolledo, one of the UDP students who participated in the project, the experience was enriching: “I appreciate it as a great opportunity to strengthen and enrich my training as a future teacher. I learned a lot regarding the pedagogy perspective that is held in Girona and it was a great impact for me to have to make the planning of classroom dynamics more flexible. I think these experiences have a lot of potential, beyond the academic. I also had the opportunity, thanks to my colleagues from Girona, to get to know a little about their culture, since each session showed us a little about Catalonia”.

Julia Marfán, director of Pedagogy in Elementatary Education UDP, summarized the importance of the project in three points:

“First of all, the possibility that our students can connect and share their vision of pedagogy, their teaching vocation, their focus on issues that were discussed in this experience, such as environmental issues and sustainability, with students who are also studying pedagogy, who are also interested in deepening and critically reflecting on these themes that are transversal and universal, that are in another country like Spain. This is an experience that has infinite value, which has to do with looking globally at the problems that society wants education, and elementary education, to take charge of: both the training of future teachers, as well as in the professional development that they are going to do with the boys, girls and children at the schools.

Second, it offers us the opportunity to generate an international experience that is consistent and accessible to the reality of our students and that allows us to spread the impact to more studen. In an international exchange, which is, without a doubt, a very interesting experience, the number of students from our degree who can access it is very low, instead, here we are talking about a course group where more than 30 students who are living that experience not only during the formal class, but also on digital platforms, such as Instagram, where they connected and could continue sharing aspects and deepening topics about being a teacher, a teacher in Santiago de Chile, and in Girona, Spain, which went much further. of the class content.

The third important aspect is to live an experience that demonstrates the pedagogical and didactic use of platforms, technologies and social networks. Clearly, social networks, ICTs, are a tool that is present today in the daily life of all young people and all students here, in Girona, anywhere in the world. Being able to offer a learning experience, which also has a didactic and pedagogical approach in that the tool is a platform like Zoom, allows it to give meaning and added value to the professional training experience of our students so that they can replicate what with their students in basic schools and connect, perhaps, with other regions and territories of our country, where there are cultural diversities”.

COIL is a pedagogical methodology that allows for a virtual exchange within a subject and adds an international focus within the course formation. This project was nominated to the General Directorate of International Relations by Kong, who received the Fund for the Internationalization of Learning Processes: “The award of this project allowed us to organize the tasks and have a clear schedule to advance towards the proposed objectives. It is necessary to indicate and thank that they always supported us and there was a constant monitoring of the work carried out. We also value the autonomy granted to deal with issues. We think of continuing to participate and expand our experience in this pedagogical model”, concluded the teacher.