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The Institute for the Future of Education (IFE) created the Innovation Hub Europe to grow the quantity, quality, and dissemination of research on topics of mutual interest. One year after its creation, the Observatorio met with Dr. Miguel A. Montoya, Director of Innovation Hub Europe, and Diego Caro Rojas, its Coordinator, to learn more about this initiative.
Dr. Miguel A. Montoya explained that the Hub’s purpose is to generate and disseminate scientific knowledge in the field of educational innovation and promote ventures, patents, or applications resulting from such research, and help formulate public policy proposals to improve education. The Hub will work on all the issues that interest the IFE from a European cooperation perspective.
The idea of the Hub’s creation comes from an invitation from the Government of Cantabria, in Spain, to the Institute for the Future of Education to create a hub for educational innovation. The primary purpose of Innovation Hub Europe is to open a door “for collaboration between TEC and Latin American researchers with European researchers to pursue the FAIR objectives (Fit for purpose, Adaptive, Inclusive, and Relevant)), which are the key themes of the Institute for the Future of Education. The Hub also seeks lines of research that may be more interesting or more current in Europe than in Mexico and see how they complement each other,” said Dr. Miguel A. Montoya. “We are a research center, fundamentally, without denying, of course, our contribution to entrepreneurship and public policies, as well as working on consulting issues or classes on the future of education. But the heart, at least from the beginning, as is the heart of the institutes at TEC de Monterrey, is the generation of knowledge for the good of society, in our case, for the future of education,” he said.
The Innovation Hub Europe was established in July 2022. The headquarters are in the Villa Comillas de Cantabria (Spain), a town that is an architectural treasure. The government of Cantabria turned the base into a center open to research and education, which also shares space with the Comillas Foundation. Its main allies are the Government of Cantabria, the Comillas Foundation, the University of Cantabria, and the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECIU), the leading international network of research-intensive universities, representing a collective emphasis on innovation, creativity, and social impact. In addition, they work with other universities and researchers in Spain and the rest of Europe to continue seeking new opportunities in the region.
One must know more about the Institute for the Future of Education (IFE) to understand the Hub in-depth and its specializations. The IFE promotes educational innovation through four key themes known as FAIR (Fit for purpose, Adaptive, Inclusive, and Relevant):
- Fit for purpose: Design pedagogical, neurocognitive, and technological approaches that lead to effective learning.
- Adaptive: Create flexible and convenient learning modes with multiple progression pathways.
- Inclusive: Bring quality education opportunities to all, including underserved communities.
- Relevant: Anticipate and respond to the dynamic changing needs of industries and society.
In addition, the IFE aims to solve educational challenges through interdisciplinary research focusing mainly on the following four areas:
- Development of approaches and methodologies for effective Competency-Based Education systems. It includes skills definition, forecasting, development, and methods of assessment.
- Technologies are applied in education to improve learning outcomes and scale up solutions for more inclusive and diverse societies globally. It includes the application of Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Learning Analytics, and extended realities.
- Development of learning models for a broader range of traditional and non-traditional learners. It includes pedagogical methods, educational and cognitive psychology, and the application of neuroscience in education and lifelong learning.
- Analyzing and developing public policies, regulations, governance frameworks, and best practices to advance Higher Education and Lifelong Learning systemic change.
Taking the main themes of the IFE, the Hub seeks to mirror the Institute to potentiate in Europe the work done in Mexico. This allows the Hub the opportunity to conduct research from a European perspective. Regarding this, the Coordinator of the Hub, Diego Caro Rojas, commented that “it is exciting, the possibility of thinking about this articulation between Spain and Latin America. I think that, in particular, the space of the Hub allows us to make this connection with Latin America from Europe.”
“I think that working with the Government of Cantabria and the University of Cantabria has been very interesting because it opens up that wealth of research produced in Latin America, reflecting on the future of education and articulating what is happening here in Europe. It seems to me very interesting, challenging, and opens new and enriching forms of collaboration,” said Caro.
Dr. Miguel Montoya added that creating the Innovation Hub Europe has allowed them to “apply or use the research we are doing from the [European] perspective and is an opportunity to get different funding than what we find in our region of Europe. And I also think it will provide us many lessons; we will discover best practices at top-level institutions around here and their way of investigating.”
Although the Hub is in Europe, Dr. Montoya emphasized that its goal is to create opportunities for research and collaboration with other countries. “We are the door […]. What we would like is to become a bridge between Tec and Europe. But I insist, if collaborators are from Chile or China, or they are from Canada or the United States, they are also welcome.”
As the Hub is in the privileged position of enjoying the perspectives of both Latin America and Europe, one of the leading research topics (as Dr. Miguel Montoya points out) will be lifelong learning, which in Europe is already advancing because there is a longer life expectancy; in Latin America, this education is just beginning. “Everything that carries the word innovation, everything that leads to lifelong learning, everything that leads to skills training for adults, draws much attention because it reminds us that the population pyramid has changed.”
On this subject, Diego Caro Rojas pointed out that “it is interesting to see how the priorities of European funds in education, in the sense of learning throughout professional life or vocational training, also align with the research objectives of IFE. In general, research into education in Latin America focuses much more on K-12. So, it is interesting to see here how this conception of education, not only at the school level, can produce super beneficial synergies.”
For his part, Dr. Montoya added that due to the pandemic, the need to create lifelong learning programs became evident. “With the pandemic came digital nomads, or people who work in one place but live in another and work from home. So all that has created a context where lifelong education, digitalization, and access to new degrees and knowledge provide a fertile field for research and conclusions, trying to understand and shed some light on the path to the future, where education is going. “
As part of its plans, the Innovation Hub Europe aims to create an educational innovation laboratory that the Government of Cantabria will establish with European funds. “We will create a nucleus of researchers from the Tec Hub, generating knowledge and proposing methodologies, products, and policies in collaboration with European researchers. We believe this will be very attractive for researchers from other universities, not just Tec or Cantabria, to come and work with us,” said Dr. Montoya.
Dr. Miguel Montoya and the Coordinator of the Hub, Diego Caro Rojas, believe they can generate many opportunities to support projects and research with European funding due to their Latin American vision. Undoubtedly, the Innovation Hub Europe more than mirrors the critical issues of the IFE; it is a bridge for researchers and academicians who passionately seek to transform the future of education.
Translation by Daniel Wetta
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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