UNIVERSITY ECOLOGICAL ORCHARD AS AN INTEGRATING LEARNING SPACE: WEAVING PARTICIPATORY NETWORKS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CADIZ

In recent years, several projects have been carried out, some of them as teaching innovations in different Spanish universities, around the creation of an orchard. Some of these orchards projects are born in order to have a learning spaces or living laboratories, where collaborative work is very present and they allow to integrate and give meaning to the different learning. Many of these initiatives have been shared in I and II Encounter of Ecodidactic Orchards recently celebrated and organized by the national association denominated Network Cultivated Universities (http://universidadescultivadas.org).

In this sense, the University of Cadiz, in the Campus of Puerto Real, has different spaces that are already being used as an orchard in different degrees: from the Early Childhood Education degree, in the subject of Environmental Education in the second semester and in the Enology degree, in the subject of Integrated Practices in viticulture during the 1st and 2nd semester. In both cases, the orchard is used as a didactic resource and context of learning, it is a tool with a high potential and around which the contents of the two subjects revolve.

Attending to the opportunities offered by an organic orchard, in this academic year a participatory project has been launched in the Campus of Puerto Real, with the purpose of creating a new space that it allows to design and create an ecological orchard for educational purposes. In the future it is expected that this orchard could be shared by many teachers and students that make up the University of Cadiz. This paper shows the initial results obtained from the collaborative experience initiated by professors from different areas of knowledge (Experimental Sciences Didactics and Plant Production) and carried out with university students of different degrees (Environmental Sciences degree, Enology degree and Chemistry degree), who are participating in several workshops organized by the Office for Sustainability (University of Cadiz) to create and design this new educational space.