Social and Education Innovation Campus created to take on social challenges of the region
The Periodicals Room of the Humanities Library played host to the presentation of the UAB's new Social and Educational Innovation Campus, an initiative that aims to generate innovation in the region thanks to the joint efforts of the UAB, businesses, city councils, and civil associations. The first municipality to adhere to the campus is Palau-solità i Plegamans.
07/02/2025
The event was attended by Javier Lafuente, rector of the UAB, and Oriol Lozano, mayor of Palau-solità i Plegamans, the first municipality to support this initiative.
“This initiative reinforces our desire to be a university open to the territory, working with local councils to respond to the needs of municipalities,” said the rector of the UAB. Oriol Lozano thanked all the institutions involved and highlighted the project as “a good example of how academic research can contribute to the preservation of cultural heritage”.
Following that, Paloma Valdivia, lecturer in the Department of Educational Theories and Social Pedagogy and director of the Campus, and Laura Palou, head of the CORE in Education and Employment, explained the objectives of the Social and Educational Innovation Campus.
The initiative launched by the UAB is seen as a tool to generate an ecosystem of social and educational innovation with the municipalities of the territory, in this case with the Palau-solità i Plegamans City Council, and thus address the educational and heritage challenges they face, through a close and interdisciplinary collaboration. In this collaboration, UAB students, research staff, technicians and municipal councilors and members of the community work together to analyse the challenges at the municipal level and propose innovative solutions, which will be materialised through concrete actions in the region.
“One of the lines of action we develop within this framework is service learning (SL), which allows students to apply their knowledge to real situations while working side by side with the community and local institutions. This collaborative model ensures that the proposals are integrative and viable and are aligned with the needs of the region,” said Paloma Valdivia.
The UAB has been collaborating for four years in social and educational innovation with the city council of Palau-solità i Plegamans. In this municipality, UAB students work with technical staff from different departments of the city council, citizens with expertise in local issues, seniors and teachers from educational centres to co-create concrete proposals for the challenges of the town in areas such as education, heritage and digital humanities.
So far, students of the Faculty of Education of the UAB have developed their final degree work in the SL modality within this project, using university resources such as the Open Innovation Labs, which have allowed them to incorporate emerging technologies to their projects.
Within this framework, several innovative initiatives have been carried out, such as, for example, the creation with augmented reality of drawings for children in early childhood education, inspired by the local festival of Guirigall; or the design of an educational resource guide with a playful methodology to promote knowledge of local heritage, which has been validated and delivered to schools in the municipality.
Now, the new Campus expands the scope of the project, which is open to the participation of more municipalities. The aim is to extend this initiative to other municipalities in the Vallès region, facilitating the creation of interconnected projects and generating open educational materials and resources.