Universidad de Celaya starts the Academic Challenge "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" that brings together companies from Celaya, students of the Global Business and Culinary Arts degrees, as well as the Ministry of Sustainable Economic Development (SDES) with the objective of designing value propositions that enhance the commercialization of products and/or services through innovative business plans to reactivate and boost commercial activity and economic revitalization of the city.
The challenge is to consider the products of at least 3 of the 4 participating companies (Bachoco, Beta Procesos, Coca-Cola FEMSA and La Tradicional de Salgado), that the equipment for the proposed business does not exceed 35 thousand pesos and that the idea is innovative. The proposals will be developed during the semester, to be presented at the end of November to entrepreneurs, teachers and representatives of the SDES.
The university students who have taken this challenge in their hands have the great opportunity to develop skills for their professional life such as: critical thinking, collaborative work, decision making, problem solving and leadership, as well as to strengthen their creativity and entrepreneurial vision.
The linkage with the productive sector through projects framed in the institutional Business Linking Program where our students, guided by their professors, work on real projects to propose solutions to community needs, is just one way in which the University of Celaya collaborates with the progress of the country and develops professional and leadership skills in students.
This Monday, August 9, 2021 in the municipality of Comonfort, Pueblo Magico, Governor Diego Sinhué Rodríguez recognized the efforts of the Institution and the academic community during the official presentation of the Title and Logo of the Collective Trademark "MCG Molcajetes de Comonfort, Guanajuato", This project was managed by Karime Velázquez Rico, now a law graduate, and contributes to the positioning of Guanajuato as a productive entity and a national reference in Industrial Property, adding with this 10 collective trademarks that boost the competitiveness of MSMEs.
The action consisted in the incorporation of a group of master craftsmen who design and produce traditional molcajetes of andesitic basalt from Comonfort as a commercial company and, once this requirement was fulfilled, in November 2019 the registration of the collective trademark was obtained before the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) in the city of León.
This work is in addition to many other activities that have been carried out by different areas of the University with various associations of artisans in our state where they have been supported in the development of websites, corporate image, digital catalogs, access to global portals for online sales, promotion and regional and national projection, among others, thus reinforcing the institutional commitment as a learning community in generating opportunities for a more prosperous Mexico.
SMEs are highly represented in the Colombian market; in the Cundinamarca region alone, 42% of businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises. But how do these companies survive in the market?
Research by Angelica María Borrego Espitia, researcher of strategies used by small and medium enterprises in Cundinamarca Colombia.
Sustainable value in SMEs
A problem that has been noticed in the region of Cundinamarca, Colombia, is that only 30% of the micro, small, medium and large companies survive the first five years after being created, which caused a lot of curiosity in locals and that is why it was decided to conduct an in-depth investigation. This research conducted by Angélica Borrego as her master's thesis at the Universidad Militar Nueva Granada under the direction of Professor Yefri Manuel Pascagaza Corredor shows us the different strategies used by the same SMEs, strategies that help us understand how they have maintained a stable place in the market of Cundinamarca.
The objective of Angélica Borrego's research was to analyze the strategies used by small and medium-sized companies in Cundinamarca to create sustainable value.
According to the data obtained in the research, the creation of sustainable value is based on the following points:
Innovation
Sustainability
Business Model
Co-creation
Value
Sustainable manufacturing
Human capital
Emerging synthesis
Circular economy
These comprise: sustainability, creation value and sustainable creation value.
By checking this information we can see that this research has a descriptive quantitative approach and its design is non-experimental-transactional, which means that it is a non-probabilistic method by convenience. Angélica Borrego says that for the collection of data a questionnaire of closed questions was carried out together with a judgment of experts and to assess the validity all this was applied in some participating SMEs in Cundinamarca Colombia.
Study results Survey results
Finally, the researcher commented on her conclusions and recommendations, which were:
Medium-sized companies are the best performers when it comes to implementing strategies for sustainable value creation
Efforts must continue to be made to achieve representative improvements in terms of sustainability.
Small companies need to work with greater dedication and adapt to current trends.
Trends are the key to creating strategies if you want your SME to remain competitive and sustainable over time.
The companies that are the subject of this study must redefine their strategies
You should always think about introducing new factors to create value, this will help your company a lot.
Last Thursday, May 13, 2021, we received at the University of Celaya during our activity "Science Dialogues" Dr. Rocio Boza Calvo from the Faculty of Education of the Universidad Hispanoamericana de Costa Rica, who shared with us the development and results of her analysis of the effectiveness of the implementation of the simulation strategy in education according to the perception of the facilitators involved in the process, from the second quarter of 2016 to date.
Would you like to know the most important details of this research? We present them to you!
The objective of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of simulation as a methodological strategy used in different courses of the curriculum of the Faculty of Education of the Universidad Hispanoamericana. This simulation strategy consists in that each professor in his course chooses thematic contents that have been addressed in the classroom and plans with the accompaniment of professional actors a scenario or also called profile that is as close as possible to the educational reality in classroom or educational center contexts, with the objective that the student faces these situations and puts into practice the theoretical knowledge acquired in the courses.
Fields of application of simulation
Simulation is a didactic strategy that allows an approach to professional reality.
Traditionally it has been used for:
- Training and education
- Communication and sales
- System design or improvements.
- Systems management
In disciplines such as:
- Engineering
- Medicine, biology, ecology.
- Social and economic sciences
Research process
In 2016, a qualitative study was conducted in the second half of the semester of the same year, at the Universidad Hispanoamericana. University that has formalized simulation in education and that has been applied in six courses of the curriculum of the different careers of the Faculty of Education, among which are:
- Learning disabilities
- Language disorders 1
- Group techniques
- Evaluation techniques in English and Spanish
- General Didactics 1
- Teaching English 3
Each of the courses where simulation is carried out as a teaching methodology contemplates in its program that the student's participation and performance in such activity has a value of 20% of the final passing grade of the subject.
Throughout the term, starting in week 7 according to their schedule, two simulations must be carried out. They have 18 trained teachers who have become facilitators to implement it.
In order to know the effectiveness of the methodology we were working with, a qualitative research was carried out by sending a questionnaire to each of the professors who implemented this methodology throughout the course they taught. It should be noted that one of them left the institution, another is no longer part of the faculty of education, another is the simulation coordinator and preferred to avoid bias and the remaining 4 did not send the survey in the time in which they were requested.
Eleven questionnaires were collected and served as a sample for the qualitative analysis.
Main results
The teachers who responded to the questionnaire report that by using simulation, students develop critical thinking, in situations that actually allow them to test what they know, what they can do and how they think it should be done. Many simulations develop decision-making skills, a very important aspect of thinking and problem solving.
All the interviewees mentioned as positive aspects the ambience of the space, the professionalism of the actors, and the technology used (Learning Space). These positive aspects are the product of a joint effort and work.
The most outstanding issue in terms of aspects to be improved is the sound and the transfer of venues to carry out the simulation. It should be noted that the respondents seemed to answer focusing on recent events and did not answer evidencing everything that occurred throughout the strategy implementation process.
Conclusions and recommendations
It is important to make it clear that although simulation allows the future teacher to get closer to reality. It will not always be able to represent or reproduce in its entirety situations that are generated within the educational centers, hence the component of using professional actors is perhaps the option that most reduces this disadvantage that several researchers have pointed out.
Professional actors are hired for the simulations considering that they have dramaturgical training and a trained capacity for reproduction that facilitates performance in an educational activity, focused on learning objectives and at the service of students in professional training.
An important factor provided by the adequate preparation of actors is the increase in the level of realism of the simulation scenarios.
Another very important factor is that the teachers attending the education courses must be active teachers with work experience so that the scenarios or profiles are as real as possible and in line with the current context.
To develop science outreach skills, 4th semester students of the Communication and Audiovisual Media degree at the University of Celaya participated in the Science Dialogues activity. In this activity, students chatted with researchers from different areas of knowledge and various universities in Mexico and Latin America to learn about their research projects and then publish a note to disseminate these projects to an international audience.
Invited guests include the following researchers:
Dr. Avid Roman-Gonzalez, CEO of BE Tech, UNTELS Lima Sur, Universidad de Ciencias y Humanidades, Peru.
Dr. Gustavo Illescas, Professor-Researcher, Faculty of Exact Sciences, Universidad Nacional del Centro, Tandil, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Rocío Lorena Boza Calvo, professor and researcher at Universidad Hispanoamericana, Costa Rica.
Dr. Yohanna Milena Rueda Mahecha, Universidad Uniminuto, Colombia
The team of students and Dr. Josman Espinosa Gómez from CETYS University, Mexicali Campus
Angélica Borrego Espitia and Oscar Robayo Quevedo, thesis students advised by Dr. Yefri Pascagaza of the Universidad Militar Nueva Granada, Colombia.
María Fernanda Acosta Romo and Marco Antonio Chamorro Lucero, researchers of the Universidad Mariana in Colombia.
Some of the notes that resulted from this activity will be published in this blog and others were published by the authors directly in their social networks and professional portfolios. We invite you to discover them.
