THE INTEGRAL EDUCATION: UNIVERSIDAD SIMON BOLIVAR’S COMMITMENT AS AN EDUCATIONAL PROJECT DEVOTED TO SERVE HUMAN AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Universidad Simón Bolívar committed to improving the learning of undergraduate students has implemented a curricular management project that guarantees the conditions for the formation of educated citizens and competent professionals. In this sense, an analysis of the perceptions that students and professors have about their learning processes was made, that give account of the pedagogical and didactic characteristic aspects of the institution and that allowed to structure a base line for the improvement actions formulation.

This work presents the results of the characterization of the pedagogic and didactic processes from the perspective of students and teachers. For the study, were designed questionnaires to collect information, which were applied to 547 professors and 5653 students of the university at the offices of Barranquilla (Atlántico) and Cúcuta (Norte de Santander). The obtained results allowed to establish comparisons between professors, between students and between students and professors, for headquarters and between both headquarters. In addition, was used the documentary analysis of the institutional archives, formal, of qualified records, specifically the condition of curricular contents, of a sample of academic programs of the University. Through the institutional documents it was possible to gather information about the institutional curriculum and in general, the characteristic academic aspects of the institution. For the analysis, a location matrix of aspects of the study subject was organized according to the attributes inherent to the curricular condition defined by current regulations. The grouping is also an analytical movement leading to higher levels of abstraction. For this purpose, it goes to the mechanism of subsuming or subordinating, within cases or more general characteristics, the cases or particular details.

With the information gathered there was an initial knowledge about the appropriation of the institutional pedagogical horizon, the didactic management in the academic programs, the students' learning and the approach of competences from the perspective of the student and the teacher, the management of the extended classroom as support for face-to-face, independent work and research formation.

This initial diagnosis has allowed the formulation and implementation of improvement actions ranging from the academic redesign of the degrees to the increase of the curricular flexibility, the interdisciplinarity and the promotion of the autonomous learning: the permanent formation of the teaching staff, through programs of situated training that generates commitment with the intervention in the classroom and in the academic management; and the deployment of strategies for the follow-up of student learning and the development of competencies, which guarantee an ideal performance in the different scenarios of social and professional action, positively impacting the environment from the different roles assumed by the graduate of Universidad Simon Bolivar.