Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Learning  environments  have  changed  significantly  in  the  past  few  decades  due  to  the inclusion of emerging Information and Communication Technology (ICT), both in hardware and software, as well as various online media in classrooms. Learners  today  utilize  mobile  gadgets  and applications  as  their  primary  sources  of  information,  knowledge,  and  social  discourse.  However, despite  these  advances  in  learning all  technologies  and  the  way  learners  have  adapted  to  their changing  environments,  Technology is often used to supplement, rather than drive, the learning environment. Smart learning involves the emerging notion of smart technology. Incorporating smart learning techniques into class room teaching seems very interesting and constitutes complete knowledge pack. Further it is interesting to see what is being done, what issues are emerging, and what successes possible in the concerned areas that likely to occur in the next few years. In responding, this conceptual paper seeks to identify learning elements and approaches that might lead to stable, coherent and exhaustive understanding of smart learning environments, thereby providing standards development for learning, education.  

The university faculty professors, characters little known to the scientific community, specialize in producing valid results in the education process of students without an explicit work process, yet they are worn out in their work. The teaching staff is claiming their human rights in order to improve their labor conditions and health rights. The university teaching staff builds the foundation for graduates to become physicians, nurses, midwives, laboratorians and radiologists. The institutional framework, the academic management process, is crossed by vertical hierarchical models and relationships. This framework is one of the primary sources of teaching work stress. The question became: Did the work stress of university teachers of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the Central University of Ecuador depend on supervision, work evaluation, shortages, relationships with students, improvements and institutional cooperation? The university staff gathered information from 138 professors (6% female) between 2019 and 2020. The test surveyed professors using the "Escala de Fuentes de Estrés en Profesores Universitarios" of the University Huelva Spain, with language adapted from its original design. The professors were studied in order to discover the primary sources of stress. The variables were handled as semiquantitative, using scale summations and averages; 95% confidence intervals and simple correlations were calculated in order to establish the sources of stress. The results demonstrated a 44.6% rate in general stress, where worry of stress ranked the most prominent response to the study. The vast majority of those surveyed related to the hierarchical characteristics of the educational organization, the hierarchical relationship of the work process and the implementation of unconsulted changes.

The approval of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) represents an ambitious roadmap which try to respond to the global and existential challenges that humanity faces. Under the slogan: “Leaving no one behind”, its 17 Goals include transcendental issues ranging from poverty eradication to climate action, through access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy or sustained economic growth, inclusive and sustainable and ending with the reduction of inequalities between countries or the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies. In this context, Universities, like the rest of the actors, are called to play a fundamental role due to their position as generators and transmitters of knowledge. This is precisely the purpose of this educational innovation project in which the SDGs are used as a learning tool. It is an innovative and multidisciplinary experience implemented during several academic years in four different degrees at the European University of Valencia. More than a hundred students have had the opportunity to participate in the project, obtaining highly satisfactory results and an evident improvement in their knowledge and skills. A project, in which different learning methodologies are combined, with the aim that students, as future leaders and managers, not only know and are able to respond to these important challenges, but also they acquire a series of competencies, the so-called soft skills, which are currently essential for a better quality education and more human.

In the current global context, the role of internationalization in Higher Education is especially marked by the need to strengthen alliances that promote higher quality in training and in the generation of knowledge for development. Its strategic vision, consequently, identifies the aspiration to provide support for an increasingly modern and competitive university. To achieve this, diagnoses that harmonize with the challenges of effectively facing management in the always challenging frameworks imposed by globalization must be encouraged. In Cuba, there is evidence of dissatisfaction in the management structures with the level of success achieved. This study proposes, from an organizational innovation process, a procedure to improve the management of internationalization at the Faculty level based on the experience of the Universidad de Oriente, which provides methodological guidelines for its possible implementation in Higher Education Institutions (IES) Cuban. In its achievement, analysis-synthesis and inductive-deductive were used as theoretical methods. In the same way, the hermeneutical method of qualitative empirical research, empirical techniques such as survey and documentary review; as well as computer supports for statistical processing, expert validation and the creation of graphs and diagrams. The proposal offers a solution to the problem identified, provides managers with a methodological tool aimed at improving the decision-making scheme supported by scientific methods and tools, and contributes to promoting quality, efficiency and effectiveness in the management of this process.

The aim of this research is to summarise thoughts, feelings and demands of lecturers, students and support staff in relation to special needs education, within the context of a legal framework with stated compromises and legal duties. The research is contextualized in the COVID-19 pandemics online or hybrid teaching, and it compares the statements of stakeholders with the recommendations issued by universities during this period and with existing best practices. The article aims to give an answer to the following questions: Which are the most important measures for students with special needs in this situation? Which are the most important for lecturers? How can we get ready for similar emergency situations? The methodology consisted in a review of the legal and standard framework, and a thematic analysis of 45 semi-structured interviews to students (27), lecturers (10), and support staff (8). The most problematic areas for students,lecturers and support staff are the inaccessibility of online teaching, virtual classrooms, teaching material, exams and assessment exercises. Students also emphasize the need for emotional/social support and the lack of it.

The research ‘Analysis of the Vicente Ferrer National Awards as an instrument to achieve the nº4 goal of Sustainable Development’ aims to study the current dimensions of the concept of Education for Sustainable Development, deepen its pedagogy and show the involvement of Spanish educational centres and their teachers in Education for Development through the Vicente Ferrer awards. After having surveyed 174 teachers and analysed the data obtained, it is inferred that the implementation of Education for Development in Spanish classrooms has been carried out effectively and efficiently so far. In addition, the data indicate that teachers are increasingly qualified in this area but few have seen their efforts rewarded. However, the text highlights that it is essential that, before joining teaching, future teachers and professors have a Higher Education that provides them with the necessary tools to incorporate skills related to Education for Sustainable Development in the classroom.

The purpose of this paper is to show an experience of collaboration between a bar association of law professionals in Mexico and academics from a higher education institution in the design and implementation of a program for teaching professional ethics to undergraduate students at a university in western Mexico. This activity was carried out in the framework of the dissemination of the Development Goals (SDG) 4, 5, 16 and 17. The methodology used was the approach and solution of ethical dilemmas developed from the experiences of the professionals of the school. The article is divided into three sections: the first explains the importance of teaching professional ethics based on the fourth SDG and the need for its incorporation into law degree curricula that contribute to achieving SDG 16; the second deals with the experience of developing practical ethics cases carried out in a professional college; finally, the experience of implementing such a program in a university in western Mexico is analyzed. The experience shows the results of using situations presented by professionals to train members of the college and undergraduate students in professional ethics.

Solidarity is an ethical-legal value that strengthens and guarantees peaceful coexistence between the peoples and territorial entities that make up a given political-administrative community. But it is also an important pedagogical and instructive element that should permeate the learning of legal disciplines and, in particular, financial and tax law. For this reason, the aim of this paper is to analyse the principle of solidarity in its territorial perspective, addressing it as one of the relevant educational values that financial and tax law should develop among students in Law Faculties. To this end, its projection and application by the European Union and the Spanish legal system is studied.

Inclusive education systems are based on an analysis of rights, which can give students autonomy, celebrate diversity, combat discrimination and promote more inclusive societies, which can be a very favorable method to end inequalities, even being able to end discrimination that is deeply rooted in society, showing greater diversity in social groups. This article integrates the analysis the recognition of the fundamental right to education and the best interests of the child, from the interpretative framework of the state duty in the promotion of equality and the fight against discrimination not only in the state framework, but through the international commitments in the matter. Inclusive education will mean a higher level of education that will allow a wider range of educational strategies, as many as educational needs are demanded by the diversity of students and allow the inclusion of children regardless of the degree of functional diversity they suffer or the situation of marginality in which they are.

This work is part of a pioneering project in Spain consisting of carrying out an academic course within the prison walls in which students from the Loyola Andalucía University and students from the prison environment, inmates of the Seville prison 1, have shared desk and have spent an academic semester “learning together”. From a participatory and inclusive perspective and using transformative teaching techniques, 29 students from “inside and outside of prison” have successfully completed an academic seminar on Law and Criminology. This study shows the effect that spending time in prison has had on university students. The few educational experiences of this type, prior to this project, have already showed the positive effects of this type of joint teaching. However, the results of this project have exceeded initial expectations: from the analysis of the semi-structured interviews carried out with the participants before and after the educational intervention, and from the analysis of the discussion groups carried out, results such as the reduction of prejudices, correction of preconceptions and reduction of punitivism in university students are revealed.