Tec’s IFE Observatory: 10 years of education trends at a click!

Over 10 years, more than 25 million people have used the articles, news, opinions, Edu Bits, newsletters, and other resources from Tec de Monterrey’s Observatory at the Institute for the Future of Education (IFE).

The Observatory was created in 2014 with the aim of offering people, especially teachers, free educational resourcesin both Spanish and English.

“At the Institute for the Future of Education Observatory, we’ve been guiding educators worldwide in critical areas of educational innovation for 10 years through the creation and distribution of open educational resources,” said its director,Esteban Venegas.

“We help our institution contribute to UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goal number 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all,” he added.

The Observatory is an IFE unit dedicated to the analysis and dissemination of the latest trends in innovation, education, and technology.

A 10-year educational information journey

The Observatory has been working to publicly disseminate educational innovation since September 2014.

“Our mission is to reach the Spanish-speaking market because we’ve realized that there is very little information about educational innovation, educational technology, and above all, open, or free, educational resources.

“We have a Spanish website and an English website because we’re obviously also looking to reach the English-speaking market,” said Karina Fuerte, Editor-in-Chief of the IFE Observatory.

Fuerte recalled that the IFE Observatory used to be an internal unit of Tec de Monterrey.

“We started primarily as an internal unit of the Tec with the goal of becoming an internal intelligence unit.

“We mainly provided relevant information to directors. So, we would make a summary of the latest state-of-the-art educational innovation, educational technology, etc.”

After that first step, the team produced trend reports.

“These were more in-depth reports on specific trends; we ended up producing reports on storytelling, gamification, learning analytics, skills, competency-based education, among other things.

“This evolved into what we now know as the newsletter that is sent out weekly,” added the editor of the IFE Observatory.

Fuerte explained that the Observatory initially monitored specialized media outlets to share the most important information. Eventually, in September 2014, they launched both English and Spanish websites.

Educational resources in the preferred format

If you’re a teacher or connected with the world of education, here are the different formats in which the Institute for the Future of Education Observatory provides information:

• Websites: You can visit the IFE Observatory site in English and Spanish.
• Newsletters: A newsletter is sent out every Tuesday with a summary of the week’s most important events. Over 250,000 people around the world are subscribed. If you’d like to receive it, you can do so here.
• Edu News: This provides news, articles, and interviews published weekly about education, technology, and innovation.
• Edu Bits: Pedagogical experiences and effective teaching practices, from teachers for teachers.
• Edu Trends: An analysis of educational trends with the greatest potential for impact on education.
• IFE Insights: Reports on educational topics relevant to those involved in managing educational institutions, policy makers, and other stakeholders interested in educational transformation.
• Webinars: A space to interact with education innovation experts. You can connect from anywhere in the world to benefit from them.
• Dialogues: Live chats on educational innovations with experts from Tecnológico de Monterrey, the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, and the Open University of Catalonia.
• Podcast: On the website, you can listen to over 50 episodes of the IFE Observatory podcast.

All these resources can be found on the IFE Observatory website.

“Our mission is to reach the Spanish-speaking market because there is very little information about open educational innovation and educational technology.”

Internationally awarded communication work

Thanks to its work in sharing free educational resources, the Institute for the Future of Education Observatory has received some international awards and honors.

“We’ve won two international awards for what we’ve been doing in terms of promoting and disseminating open educational resources on innovation,” she said.

In 2017, they received the award for the Best International Collection of Open Educational Resources of that year from the Open Education Consortium.

In 2021, they won the award for the Best Open Curation / Repository together with the University of Edinburgh, which is ranked 22nd in the world in the QS Rankings. This honor was awarded by Open Education Global.

“What’s more, our newsletter has become a point of reference for educational innovation bulletins in Latin America,” highlighted the IFE Observatory editor.

Publishing and sharing experiences with other teachers

One of the Observatory’s resources is known as Edu Bits, which includes articles about pedagogical experiences and effective teaching practices, by teachers for teachers.

The Institute for the Future of Education (IFE) Observatory has launched the Edu Bits call for applications for those who wish to share an innovative pedagogical experience.

Through this call, it aims to highlight the work of teachers around the world. It’s open to professors, researchers, students, and academic leaders from any institution.

For details and requirements, please visit the call for applications posted on their website.

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