Monitoring educational trends and innovation

The eLearning Innovation Center's Educational Trends and Innovation Observatory

Detecting good practices and innovation within teaching and learning

We focus on detecting good practices and innovation within teaching and learning in order to understand what is happening in the world of education and work, carry out the relevant analyses and build our conclusions into documents and projects. This allows us to:
 

  • Apply improvements and current trends to the UOC's model.
  • Keep up to date with the latest developments in online learning.
  • Understand the needs of the market so our advisers can provide relevant guidance.

The Observatory maintains contacts with the most influential experts in the fields of education and technology and with networks and bodies linked to education and international policy, which continuously generate articles and reports of interest for the educational community.

Projecting practices and trend analyses from the eLinC and the UOC

We share and highlight the knowledge and advances we achieve within and outside the UOC, to continue influencing teaching trends, learning design and educational technologies, and to create opinion.

To this end, the Observatory contributes to the generation of content for various channels and sites run collaboratively at the UOC.

Radar d'universitats singulars (RUS)
Distinctive universities


Society is changing and learning methods must change with it. It is vital to draw attention to the changes in education occurring everywhere, especially in universities. The role of our radar is to detect and analyse the most distinctive and innovative educational experiences found around the world.

The radar's model


Three aspects make an educational model distinctive, different and unique. These three models (teaching, education and services) are often interlinked: an institution with a distinctive teaching system generally has a different organizational system, for example.

Teaching model

This includes course design, teaching, guidance, assessment and learning resources

A distinctive teaching model is Hyper Island, a leading European school with programmes designed to lead to jobs in technology, design, advertising and business, where students work on real challenges and projects proposed (and assessed) by companies.

Organizational model

Teaching roles, operations, technologies and work processes.

A distinctive organizational model is that of the University of the People, a free university where higher education is treated as a basic right for all and which is organized by volunteers all around the world.

Service model

The personalization of services and the relationship between the institution and society, including research and knowledge transfer.

A distinctive service model is that of Monash University, Australia's most international university, which sends many students on placements to Malaysia. It has many connections with industry in order to transfer knowledge and is renowned for the number of spin-offs it has generated.
 

"Dies singulars en universitats singulars" podcast and interviews


As we observe and search for distinctive universities, we are frequently in contact with institutions with very interesting stories to tell in an interview or an informal chat.

These conversations are recorded and edited to provide material for our podcasts.
 

We detect and we project

Next Generation Pedagogy

Briefing paper: chatbots in education

Featured blog articles

Virtual debates: Diálogos