Internationalization of the curriculum: Connectivism approach supported by relational leadership. A case study

Abstract

Introduction: previous to the world pandemic covid-19, professors from a Mexican Public HEIs, located in the south of the country, had been implementing educative platforms as an internationalization of the curriculum strategy to include technology in their teaching, specifically in DACEA division. The first institutional platform implemented in 2004 was Moodle, Socrative, and Edmodo was the second step by a group of 20 out of 250 professors until 2020 when Microsoft Teams became the institutional educative platform. Method: the objective of this qualitative article is to characterize the roles and responsibilities of educational actors in the new digital management derived from the covid-19 pandemic in a Mexican Public HEI. Results: The findings indicate that the institution homologated the use of an educative platform at an institutional level, a training on the use of this new platform was given only covering the technical aspects, but there was still the pedagogical training missing for Flipped Classroom Methodology. The Syndicate leader with the aid of a small group of active professors, provided an online training course oriented towards the certification of digital competences with the participation of 120 professors from the 12 areas of the university. This work between the main educative actors: the institution and the syndicate leaders along with the professors has created the foundations for university engagement and a new administrative culture of collaboration. Conclusion: it is concluded that all educative parties when properly engaged can lead to the completion of objectives avoiding change resistance that sometimes arises specially when professors migrate from present mode to a distance mode.