Presentation of the project that aims to promote the digitization of Spanish universities
Digitize all training and research processes of the universities Spanish and the rest of the world is the challenge that the Royal Academy of Engineering through a project that aims to remove barriers between higher education and industry, and erase physical boundaries to attract talent.
The initiative, which will be formally presented in Madrid in a couple of weeks, “tries to generate a real transformation ”based on success stories, not in theory or analysis, explains the general director of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAI), Javier Pérez de Vargas, in an interview with EFE.
“Until now, basically, digitization has been associated with teleclassesHowever, it offers much more powerful solutions than the simple organization of classes ”, he adds.
It is about, he explains, promoting a model that not only focuses on the student but also “Generate collaborative relationships with other universities, to focus on the importance of knowledge transfer to the industry and to facilitate communication ”.
The Forum for the Digitalization of the Higher Education ”(FDHE) project, which has the help of the Indian multinational Tata Consultancy Services, It will digitize from the management of exams, assessments, results and communications with students to access to the latest digital learning services.
The general director of the Royal Academy also stresses that there are “frequent complaints of the Business regarding the fact that universities produce graduates who do not enjoy the necessary areas of knowledge. With this model we want a greater connection and if indeed companies need experts in data science or cybersecurity, that the University act faster ”.
Another objective is to share "the best solutions and practices in the environment of digitization of the higher level education to achieve this kind of permeability and to share knowledge, cases of success and failure, so that we all learn ”.
Warns Perez de Vargas that “this revolution will require a review of the regulatory framework; it is important that we remove corsets and that the areas of knowledge that are taught are more flexible ”.
In this sense, he advocates ending excessively "rigorous or bureaucratic" procedures and also facilitating knowledge that is not "the overflow of the professor or professor towards the studentsBut promote learning based on real projects, "Not artificial".
The initiative also aims to “open our eyes to administrations so that regulations accompany this trend of modernizing education processes such as, for example, adapting the knowledge that is imparted to what the industries really need, and to a certain sensitivity to recruiting students not only from a local but also a global environment ”.
With these intensive digitalization models, “there is no reason to respect the borders of an autonomous community, but rather you can look for talent in Asia, Latin America, Oceania ... In the end, only prestigious universities are the ones that will be able to survive ”.
In the first stage of the project, a governing council will be created, made up of Spanish and foreign universities, and representatives of administrations and companies, to define an action plan.
This plan "will be oriented, first of all, to share best practices, to showcase digitization-intensive solutions that are of interest to universities, which they will decide if they implement them ”.
Ultimately, Pérez de Vargas concludes, the differentiating element of the RAI project - which "is not a commercial proposal" - is “Manage this convergence of the needs of the productive fabric and the availability of the university, always with the backing of the administrations. If the regulatory framework does not accompany, we will not have done anything ”.
