Work in progress — How to provoke creativity and innovation within the classroom by modifying the role of faculty

The normal role of teachers in a classroom is based on the didactic method of teaching involving lectures and writing on the board, or assisting students in their exercises in a consultant manner. This is a passive method of learning. This classical approach to teaching has been evolving in the last few years with more innovative practices being proposed and implemented. Particularly, the Socratic method of teaching, which is a more open, non-lecture style and has less teacher directed activities, in an effort to approximate the work place with teams and more real world scenarios. In the course entitled “Teaching Innovation”, a new role for teachers was conceived and implemented. This innovative teaching philosophy provides a dual role for teachers. In this class the innovative, thought provoking teacher initiates the discussion and gives the appearance of providing disruptive ideas, while the insightful, facilitative teacher is steering the students into formulating those ideas into reality. At the end of this course there were 11 innovative educational programs that were proposed to potentially modify the study of technology in the secondary level of the Spanish System of Education.