Social innovation projects as a strategy for the development of competencies of university students

Abstract

Given the demand of the society of the 21st century, universities are implementing the strategy of social innovation projects to achieve disciplinary and transversal skills in students. The purpose of this research is to discover the degree of development of four transversal competencies that a university of Mexico proposes in the profile of its students' graduation, after experiencing these projects. In addition, it investigates the learning achieved within the students and how they lived this process. The results were obtained through the application of a survey of 222 students who participated in social innovation projects in the state of Chiapas, Mexico and with the qualitative analysis of 34 participants' reflections. The competencies that achieved significant development were innovative entrepreneurship and social innovation, social intelligence, ethical and citizen commitment, self-knowledge and self-management.