Jaime Andrés Gutiérrez Herrera

Purpose: This paper aims to propose and evaluate a pedagogically sound and innovative strategy to teach a higher education course that prepares future professionals to intelligently use information and communication technologies (ICTs) in their personal and professional lives. Design/methodology/approach: The conceptual framework used for the design of the course was the socio-constructivism and activity theories. The implementation of the course was evaluated using the intrinsic case study methodology by including several instruments. Findings: The pedagogical strategy proposed proved to be sound, as the evaluation showed that students were able to describe, use and propose innovative uses of a wide range of cutting-edge technologies in their both everyday lives and professional settings; they also had the skills to analyse the opportunities and challenges that these presented. Moreover, students liked this innovative way of learning and ended with a positive attitude towards ICT. Originality/value: Although several courses prepare students to be digital citizens or use ICT to enhance the teaching-learning process, millennials are ill prepared to use cutting-edge technologies in an innovative, responsible and critical way in their future professions. The course that was designed is original in that it goes beyond preparing digital citizens to prepare professionals in any domain to use ICT in an informed and responsible way. Moreover, it is a documented, successful example of an undergraduate universal course in a highly important current society dimension. The authors believe that its pedagogical proposal could be transferred to courses dealing with other global issues such as the environment, economy and peace.

This article provides a description of the design and implementation of a system of evaluation for an integrative course (a Capstone Course) in a Business Administration Faculty. This evaluation system consists of three parts (programme evaluation, evaluation of learning and knowledge management) and is aimed at making more complex both the students´ formative assessment as well as the teachers´ classroom practice, in order to lead to innovation. Action research provides the basis for the methodological design of the evaluation system, taking into account evaluation approaches for programme improvement, participatory evaluation and innovation understood as problem solving. The article concludes with a description of the impact of the system in terms of the advantages provided for the improvement of the course, the possibility of involving all the actors in order to establish relevant structural changes and the capacity to generate reflection and change in the evaluation culture of the teachers.