Abstract:

Educational innovation is an intervention where the object of innovation or transformation is educational practice (Moreno, 2000). From this point of view, we propose the following work, whose main objectives are to analyze educational innovation processes and their management in the field of higher education and as a specific case study, business schools.From this framework, the results that are going to be displayed correspond to the organization to which their authors belong.

Educational innovations can be classified in relation to different criteria. If we look at its degree of novelty and the scope of its change, we find continuous innovation, systematic innovation and disruptive innovation (Valencia and Valenzuela, 2017). From this framework, the work presented how these types of innovations are applied in the field of business schools to, later, analyze the process carried out in the business school that is the central object of analysis.

The innovation process that has been decided to implement, after analyzing other experiences from other business schools, is based on continuous innovation, given that up to now, innovation processes had not been managed and implemented at the business School Business under analysis. Continuous educational innovation involves routine changes and is part of continuous improvement processes. They are small deviations from educational practices that, by themselves, do not change it to a great extent, but when they accumulate, they translate into more deep changes.

In order to apply it to the our Business School, the Dean's Office decided to incorporate the figure of the Chief Learning Officer, a new figure in the field of higher education compared to the classic instructional designers or experts in pedagogy. From this figure, it is intended to professionalize the management of continuous educational innovation and through the method presented in this presentation, achieve the goal of transforming continuous innovation into systematic innovation.

For this, the model used is the one proposed by Moen and Norman (2006), based on four stages: plan the change, make the change, verify how it is taking place and act according to what is established. Each of these stages has involved a series of specific actions. Without the aim of being exhaustive in this summary, the main actions have focused on reviewing current methodological practices and recognizing opportunities for improvement; raise awareness and train for the implementation of improvements; evaluate and identify learning and establish improvement strategies if the objectives are not achieved.

But an innovation process, even if it is continuous, cannot be put into practice without involving its main actors, the professor and staff of the Business School. In addition to the training and education of teachers and staff, workshops and learning communities were carried out where the learning obtained has been used in higher stays. In this way, the actors involved have felt that they are protagonists of the changes (these practices will be detailed in the final work).

In addition, another important point of this method is working on the skill of innovative. Thus, strengths and weaknesses were identified through a survey completed by profesors and staff to propose teaching innovation workshops and facilitate learning in this essential skill in higher education to improve or strengthen student learning in their future context of work.

Keywords:

Educational innovation, learning, higher education, continuous innovation, chief learning officer, methodologies.