Tec’s educational innovation is example in international webinar

“Innovation has always been part of Tec de Monterrey’s DNA,” said David Garza, Rector and Executive President of the Tec, when invited by Constructor University to present the educational milestones that have been part of the Tec’s history.

The Tec was chosen to kick off the second season of the Innovative Universities Global Webinar Series, promoted by the German university as a symposium of academics with a vision for the future.

“While universities used to be seen as closed boxes –where everything happened internally– those boxes are opening up to the future,” Garza said during his presentation.

The Tec’s Rector and Executive President highlighted its educational innovation milestones, such as the evolution of its educational model, the incorporation of emerging technologies, the promotion of lifelong learning, and the path towards building a multi-diverse university.

Creating an educational model, a Tec innovation

The Tec model, Garza explained, is based on the idea that young people will face the emergence of new challenges throughout their post-university life while giving them a “toolbox” that they can use to solve them.

In this case, he identified two plausible scenarios: one, in which the tools needed to meet these new challenges come from the unique experiences that these professionals have undergone.

A second scenario is the point at which the professionals see the need to update the tools they already have due to the constant advances and changes that exist in technological, work, and social landscapes.

“As an institution, we asked ourselves: why not first incorporate those experiences as part of the curriculum, part of the undergraduate experience?” Garza mentioned while explaining what triggered the Tec’s current educational model.

“It’s about exposing students by design, by structure, to solve problems, to solve real challenges, but evaluating them in terms of the learning outcomes and competencies they’re acquiring,” he said.

The Tec has distinguished itself for its challenge-based approach in which faculties from different areas join educational partners (or training partners) in the design of joint challenges for students.

“Every semester, we connect with more than 2,200 educational partners, something that has put us in the eye of international institutions (as leaders in educational innovation),” Garza said about the model’s external recognition.

By uniting the traditional curriculum with challenge-based experiences and lifelong learning, the Tec21 model has positioned itself as a disruptive approach within the higher education landscape.

Educational strategies in the face of change

While the educational model stands out for its hybrid nature between traditional and “real life” challenges, it is also distinguished by its continuous incorporation of technologies that transform the landscape every day.

“From the beginning, we’ve considered ourselves extremely proactive in early technology adoption. We consider ourselves pioneers in identifying how these new digital tools can improve education,” the Rector added.

According to the Executive President, the pandemic served as a transformation point that emphasized the importance of using new digital tools to enhance the university’s reach.

During this stage, the Tec registered around 55,000 remote class sessions and other activities per week, in addition to digital “visits” by more than 100 international teachers.

These professors, from 80 universities in more than 26 countries, joined the faculty of the Tec ecosystem in 257 academic courses taught 100% digitally under the Global Classroom initiative.

Garza also highlighted the importance given to micro-accreditations (particularly micro-credentials) as a response to the need for professionals to constantly update their skills.

“We believe that in the future, organizations may place more value on students’ specific competencies and the level to which they have developed and continue to develop them,” he explained.

The future lies in lifelong learning

Garza explained that the Institute for the Future of Education emerged as a focused response to the need to transform the paradigm of higher education through lifelong learning.

“Most centers of this style around the world focus on K–12 education, but we decided to focus on adults at 18 and older,” the Rector said.

“(With this institute) we’re interested in understanding how people learn and how new pedagogies and technologies can impact them in their journey,” he added.

Educational innovations stemming from research have led to projects such as iClassroom, aimed at assessing students’ levels of engagement, attention, and interaction through the use of AI and video analysis.

Garza emphasized that current educational trends focus on the theme of lifelong learning, marking a latent need for alternative programs to a traditional professional career.

With the future marking a path towards retraining and improvement of skills and competencies, Garza indicates that the Tec already has around 160,000 students belonging to these types of non-traditional programs.

The road toward a ‘multiversity’

As final points, Garza explained how technologies such as AI, which have become elemental parts of everyday life, in turn drive the need to transcend the concept of the university and focus on the multiversity.

In order to break down this last concept in detail, the Rector talked about eight “M’s” that will characterize educational institutions of the future:

• Multidisciplinary: Beyond a single specialization, a diversity of competencies.
• Multicultural: Constant interaction with different cultures.
• Multi-modal: With educational experiences that can be in-person, hybrid, remote, or completely asynchronous.
• Multidimensional: Taking into account students’ intellectual, emotional, occupational, physical, and social axes.
• Multi-institutional: Moving from a model of one student per institution to a model of one student associated with multiple institutions.
• Multi-environment: Learning focused on the “real world” and not only on learning in the classroom.
• Multifaceted: Continuous learning throughout learners’ lives
• Multi-organizational: Activities done in collaboration with other organizations.

Tips to continue shifting paradigms

Finally, the Tec Rector and Executive President closed his webinar presentation with 12 tips that other university leaders can take into account to innovate in education:

1. Avoid complacency, never settle, and always look for new challenges.
2. Don’t expect to have all the answers.
3. Start small but keep a vision to scale quickly.
4. Find champions to support your cause, and always have a plan to persuade others.
5. Build a diverse team with members whose strengths complement each other.
6. Clear and visible messages that demonstrate the direction in which you want to move forward.
7. Achieve quick goals.
8. Implement innovation incrementally.
9. Be patient and be prepared for criticism and failure.
10. Celebrate and publicize the “small” achievements, recognize early adopters.
11. Secure key investor support and financing.
12. Remember: a vision without action is just a dream, while action without vision is a nightmare.

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