Linkage University - Society: space to generate creativity and innovation

Abstract

The projection of the University towards Society acquires a significant relevance within the framework of a relevant higher education and with social responsibility. The Ecuadorian University in a general way, immersed in this process, has as its mission to preserve, develop and promote, through its substantive processes and in close connection with society, culture, which will allow it to train integral professionals that contribute to the development of the locality, the province and the country. However, it has become evident that, during the process of professional degree formation, there is a deficient articulation of the University Extension with the other substantive processes of the University, identifying as the only beneficiaries to the community actors and not to the university students. thus demonstrating the absence of the analysis of the university extension from its pedagogical dimension, where the educative value that the University Extension has in the professional degree training is recued. In this context, the university extension constitutes an important linking action with the community and an organizational form of learning, in response to social demands, where the university can respond and learn at the same time from the reality. However, the University Extension as a social and educational experience has not achieved adequate visibility and transcendence in relation to its formative nature and social transformation, which limits the scope of this training space in the personal, professional and social growth of students. university. Thus arises the need to resignify the potential of University Extension from the extension practices as a social space of integration training-experience-community context, to which this research responds with both conceptual and experimental analysis of an extension practice through a case study carried out in ecuadorian universities, by the authors of the present research, oriented to the transformation of the extensionist practice in formative experiences of social commitment, integrated to the formative process of the professional.