Carolina Arce, Regional Manager for Mexico & the Caribbean for U-Planner spoke on June 24th with over 60 representatives from universities and higher education institutions of the Dominican Republic. Her talk was part of the
Foro de Educación Superior e Innovación 2016, an education and innovation forum held by Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (
Funglode) and
Microsoft.
The U-Planner representative discussed a range of engineering solutions for education to optimize curricular management, retention and academic planning. She also presented some success stories where institutions have implemented educational software to improve internal management.
She specifically addressed the role of
technology to help early detection of high-risk students, to improve student
retention in higher education around the region.
"One of the greatest challenges for the universities in Latin America and the Caribbean is student retention, as over 50% of those who enrol in higher education drop out during their first year, with important consequences for students, the university an the society as a whole," she adds.
Funglode is a nonprofit organization aiming to formulate innovative proposals in strategy and daily issues about relevant concerns for the Dominican Republic, as well as analyzing and studying how global issues affect the development of the country.
The conference was directed to higher education authorities, administrators, faculty and experts in technology, and gathered a series of specialists in the field such as:
- Federico Muller - Microsoft.
- Guillermo Caicedo - NAGNOI.
- Stanley Lara - Solvex.
- Ricardo Muñoz - LATINSHARE.
- Patricio Rodriguez - Universidad de Chile
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"Higher education institutions face great challenges adapting their programs to deal with globalization and an accelerated change in technologies."
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"Many of the current job descriptions will no longer exist, and many of the work positions haven't been created yet. ¿How can a university deal with all that? By adding innovation in their process of development and redesign of plans, with intelligent tools that can help them speed up for the changes they require", Carolina Arce commented after the event.