Presentation of a study on skills acquired through participatory practice
On Wednesday 14 December the UAB Theatre Hall will host the presentation of a study conducted thanks to a participatory process on the skills UAB students acquire through participatory practice. The study was conducted by the UAB Community Involvement Unit with the collaboration of TàndemSocial Cooperative and the Fundació Marianao. The presentation also will be streamed live here.
It is impossible to deny that education and learning processes have evolved in these past few decades towards a model in which practical learning experiences play a key role. These experiences are often not acknowledged within the traditional formal learning structure due to their intangible nature and the difficulty of measuring them quantitatively.
This is why the UAB Community Involvement Unit, in collaboration with the TàndemSocial Cooperative and the Fundació Marianao, conducted a study on the cross-curricular skills university students acquire through participatory practice. The objective of the study was identifying the tasks carried out during the participatory practices to analyse the skills acquired. This would allow setting down the bases for a future process of evaluation and recognition of these skills within the formal education model.
An efficient and practical methodology was used to demonstrate how acquiring skills is directly linked to the development of participatory tasks and practices. Several students were selected to participate in two discussion group sessions and were divided according to the type of participatory activities they were carrying out. The goal of the sessions was to discover the tasks they had done and relate them with the skills they had finally acquired.
The two participatory sessions made it possible to validate the connection and assimilation of different cross-curricular skills through participatory practices and the development of roles in associations, organisations, tasks in representation of others, and activities within the university. After the sessions, they were asked to to fill out a questionnaire to complete the data needed for the study.
A class delegate, for example, must know how to communicate and use the right kind of register when speaking to lecturers, classmates or faculty dean. Without realising it, when conducting these tasks, the delegate creates systems to automate these tasks and learns to use specific programmes. When voting on a decision in class, they learn to lead the conversation and organise the class. These skills, and many more, are of extraordinary value both professionally and personally.
The presentation of the study will take place on Wednesday 14 December from 1:30 to 3 p.m at the UAB Theatre Hall and is open to the general public.
The presentation will also be streamed live here.