U-Life

U-Life

YOUR EVER-GROWING PLACE BEYOND THE CLASSROOM

By Silvana Balarezo Faculty Innovation Fellow Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas

Universities are rapidly moving from face-to-face to virtual. We started the process a few years ago but the pandemic has accelerated the need for such transformation. We know that university life goes beyond just taking classes. If we want to transform the university experience for distance-learning students, we need a platform that promotes university services and values such as social interaction, diversity, multiculturalism, co-creation and innovation.

During pandemic lockdowns, when we had to move to virtual campuses, we had students who did not experience physical campuses. Also, during this emergency process, we were focused on maintaining class sessions without losing academic quality. There was no time to address university life beyond the classroom — what happens in the corridors of the university, dining halls, yards and parking sites, and in the interactions of the students. These students, in addition to studying, were entering a world where they hoped to find new friends and a social environment that complemented their academic training and reinforced their soft skills.

In this context, the need to create this parallel virtual space appears, which allows students and teachers to meet in a non-formal environment facilitated by the university. Carolina is a student who finished high school with great emotion and enthusiasm, given that a few years earlier, she was in the process of choosing which university career she would follow. Finally, she opted for the International Business career, which is also very trendy. In fact, she entered the UPC a few months before finishing high school. She took a well-deserved vacation and when she returned ready to start this new stage of her life, eager to meet new friends who would also mark the path of the following years, a global pandemic appeared, and Carolina began her university classes online. She focused on her classes, on understanding the Virtual Classroom concept, and on trying to stay awake in her classes, which she often took from her bed. It was a challenge. The university began to offer some virtual activities to meet friends, but nobody turns on their camera, nobody talks. In conclusion, the university — besides the classes, some being good and others more or less — couldn’t offer life beyond the class sessions. At most, she talks with her teachers and the people from the group she has been working with on some courses. After two years, Carolina feels disappointed and bored with the life she leads. She gets up, goes to her classes, does her homework, doesn’t know who she’s talking to and assumes they’re good people. But she would like to get to know the university and to know what other activities there are. Sometimes she finds out about some of them when there are no longer any more places left, because someone mentioned it, and everything is very scattered in the university. She recently found out that there is a virtual parallel world that has activities within the university. She is very curious to know how it works so she can meet other friends, and/or be part of a community of interest. She really likes skating and surely there must be more people interested in this topic. Carolina registered so you can enter this world and explore and see what it is about. The day came when Carolina was able to enter the U-Life world and found that she could visit any of the campuses. She first visited the Monterrico campus, which was her study campus, and she was pleasantly surprised by all the spaces that it has. She found a community of entrepreneurs and chatted with them for a while. She then explored the e-sports community, where members were talking to see if they could create a group of skaters and they said yes. Now she is thinking of creating that community in this world and being able to meet students interested in this topic. She was also able to see that there is a community of tutorials in Statistics. She went there because the truth is that things are not going very well on this topic, and she could see that many students attend these tutorials and improved their grades. And ohhh surprise, on the weekend there is a live concert, by God, she will not miss that. She only needs to convince two friends to go with her to get her ticket. And suddenly when she left the virtual world because she had to run to a class, she was very happy to know that there was life beyond the classroom. Carolina has created a community of skaters in the e-sports section of U-Life, she has more than 30 followers in her community, and even now that she is already returning to face-to-face spaces, they have been able to meet physically last Friday in the hour of University Life. This online space is great for creating a community, coordinating activities and whenever you want you can complement it with face-to-face meetings. In addition, Carolina found out in U-Life that it’s possible to organize a hackathon to create a space in the world, and she is encouraging the skating community to create a skating rink to hold online tournaments in this world. U-Life is a parallel world created by the university based on the structure of the four university campuses, with some initial communities and spaces, but which allows students and teachers to add/create spaces of their own interests and create a community. Combine online and face-to-face activities and have this space for socialization and networking beyond the classroom. The objective is to create a door to all extra-curricular activities so that students and teachers can get to know and explore them. Currently there are many extra-academic services offered by the university but they are dispersed.

With U-Life, UPC students and teachers will be able to find a virtual space that they can access from the Virtual Classroom at any time with their university credentials and meet their classmates, make new friends, attend events, activities and/or online services and combine them with face-to-face meetings. In the same way they will be able to create new spaces of their own interest and promote them. This will allow taking advantage of the hybrid experience to which the university is moving and those students and teachers, who do not have the opportunity to attend in person, have the opportunity to learn about the university and its different activities and services, beyond the classrooms. Here is a link with a tour of the campuses from U-Life (MVP): youtu.be/P0JLXUsyUbA