Active methodologies and knowledge management to promote creativity and innovation in the classroom

Abstract

Knowledge management is a concept that originated and frequently applied in the business environment, associated with the stimulation of creativity and innovative ideas to increase competitiveness. However, it is possible to use its guiding ideas in other areas, where creativity and innovation, the generation of new knowledge and the implementation of methods to make them explicit and manage them in educational organizations are also relevant.

This work presents the pedagogical proposal of a university subject and investigates the perception that students have about the training process developed in it, in particular if they believe that innovation and the generation of knowledge have been promoted in view of their future contribution to society. The survey has been carried out through a survey applied at the end of the school year.

Administration II is a subject located at the end of the Basic Cycle of the Faculty, which has a duration of 2 years. It receives an average of 800 students each year, belonging to all the courses that are taught. The proposal is based on the design and implementation of simulation dynamics to analyze the environment of an organization, role-playing games to interpret what a manager does, problem solving related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), simulation of the operation of an industry to work on the impact of corporate social responsibility, discussion in small groups to analyze decision-making in the context of certainty, risk or uncertainty, application of creativity techniques such as combinatorial matrices to develop new ideas, among others.

In order to comprehensively evaluate the chair proposal, it is relevant to know the opinions of the protagonists, the students, who can provide relevant feedback to learn about the transformations and experiences lived. The perception of students about their training process is different for Administration II compared to the other subjects studied. They have felt more motivated to be creative, both because of the teacher's encouragement, because of the activities carried out inside and outside the classroom, and because of the type of work and presentations requested. Likewise, tools and methods have been used that were considered original with respect to previous experiences. This is relevant if we consider that the majority of students believe that creative classes would favor their learning and that what they have learned will help them be innovative in their current or future work.