Open innovation in Universities should be founded on several principles: Education
is an affective act (implying special attitudes between faculty and students);
Education is a collective act (a community of learning generates more knowledge
than the individuals): Education is a sustained act (an activity linked to active
learning and ageing); Education is a spatial act (human contact is necessary to
achieve a complete formation for future citizens, beyond their achievement of
mere technical abilities). To achieve these goals, this paper proposes the philosophy
of the “Educational Campus”, a modern paradigm that can be applied to
transformation processes of Institutions of Higher Education. Actually, this conceptual
tool has been used by the Spanish Ministry of Education in the Program
“International Campus of Excellence”, since its first edition in 2009.
Excellence in Universities must be based on the main principle of the “Educational
Campus”: that the human contact that makes Education possible must take place
in a real location. Consequently, it is necessary to underline the critical role that
Architecture has to play in the evolution of Universities towards innovation, as
it hosts the human contact needed to achieve the true mission of Universities:
the integral formation of a human being.
The “Educational Campus” has the capacity of fostering open innovation processes
at four scales: relation between University, city and territory; the campus as
an independent complex; the building as an architectural piece; and finally, the
classroom, as the basic learning spatial unit. Overall, the quality of Universities is intimately tied in with human attitudes,
but also with the quality of its Architecture. Through sound planning (using the
“Educational Campus” paradigm), Universities can improve the nature of their
spaces, transforming them into sites where innovative teaching and learning modalities
can be hosted, as well as places to invite citizens of all ages to keep on
participating through all their lives in the fascinating task of education.