Salesian University Center awarded first place for innovation in higher education

(MissionNewswire) The Salesian University Center (UniSales) based in Vitória, Brazil, was awarded first place in the Professor Gabriel Mário Rodrigues Award for Innovation in Higher Education. The awards were created and organized by Semesp, an institution representing higher education providers in Brazil. UniSales won the award for its project “Socio-Emotional Day: Web Application for the Evaluation of the Development of Soft Skills in Higher Education.”

The award honors professionals working in the higher education field in recognition of Rodrigues, a notable educational pioneer and one of the people responsible for the prominent position achieved by the private higher education system in the country.

With UniSales’ winning application, students will be able to monitor and assess the development of their social-emotional skills during their degree course, enabling them to develop soft skills that are increasingly relevant in today’s labor market.

Professor Carmen Luiza, dean, said, “We are aware that the labor market does not only require technical skills, but above all socio-emotional skills. For us, this award is an acknowledgement that we are very much in line with the recognized needs of higher education and the labor market.”

Luiza also said that the award is a further incentive to open up new perspectives and initiatives for the development of students’ socio-emotional skills. She said, “This award gives us a glimpse of the possibility of even more transformative paths of what can be achieved to innovate the structure of socio-emotional development in education.”

Professor Alexandre Cardoso Aranzedo, academic vice-chancellor of UniSales, developed the methodology behind the application in collaboration with his fellow lecturer in the UniSales psychology course, Professor Christyne Gomes Toledo.

Aranzedo explained, “We are an institution that trains professionals for this market and, almost five years ago, we recognized this need and changed the pedagogical proposal to train professionals to develop not only the necessary technical skills but also social-emotional skills.”

The methodology provides for moments of self-assessment, assessment of the student by peers and assessment by the groups in which the student belongs, all in anonymity. Assessments are divided into 10 macro-competencies.The application was developed by Marcelo Albuquerque Schuster, technology course coordinator, in collaboration with the students through the university’s Software Factory.

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ANS – Brazil – ‘UniSales’ socio-emotional evaluation app receives Semesp innovation award

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