Abstract:

Colombia offers a diverse educational system after secondary education, one option is training for work and human development focuses on developing job skills that allow people to perform in different areas and trades, another approach is technical and technological education that seeks to train people for the use and application of technologies for specifics areas in productive sectors with a focus on job performance and finally, higher education with the training of professionals with different approaches and impacts.

Linking previous training paths into a lifelong learning approach often proves difficult for young people in Colombia, curricular differences, accreditation hurdles, and social barriers do not allow more young people to enter new training and qualification processes.

The Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas, a public university in Bogotá, Colombia, is developing strategies to increase the number of young people who access and remain in higher education, within the framework of state public policies that support this growth. One of the lines of development consists of offering access to young people with previous training in programs at other post-secondary levels so that they can continue in one of the professional courses offered there.

On the one hand, an analysis of the curricular alignment between the previous training and the university programs is proposed. The task has been challenging, because the approaches to learning are different, although they are in related areas of knowledge. Curricular alignment makes it possible to go beyond content and explore learning outcomes, skills and abilities, and the methodologies used, to identify the aptitude of a student with previous training to continue studies in advanced semesters of the curriculum and not necessarily from the beginning.

The biggest challenge lies in the gap between the scientific and mathematical background needed for professional training and what is required at other educational levels. To address this, the second stage of the strategy proposes support activities to help these students level up and adapt to university demands, ensuring they stay on track and graduate within the program timeframe.

The strategy is being developed with graduates of the biggest public institution in technical and technological training in Colombia, Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA) from some of its courses, which has let the admission of several young people with previous training in engineering programs at the University, and goes on working in other areas such as management, education sciences, and arts.

Keywords:

Life long learning, post-secondary training paths.