Migrating to multimodal education

At our institution ,ICSEF, we have women in situations of socioeconomic vulnerability who live in rural or poor urban regions. These women aspire to obtain a degree in gastronomy. Currently, they need to be able to do it from home, given the restrictions on mobility.

ICSEF seeks that women in situations of vulnerability develop skills that will allow them to learn throughout their lives. We seek that ICSEF women can start a business or be employed with a decent salary.

The current global conditions have led ICSEF to rethink education and migrate towards education with alternation between face-to-face and distance education (multimodal training). The situation in times of coronavirus has revealed the barriers that ICSEF students and their families face at home.

For this reason, ICSEF will use the Moodle platform. For students who do not have access to internet, we will have an offline version of this platform.

The impossibility of ICSEF women to continue with their professional education due to the lack of economic and technological resources, which is caused by their geographic vulnerability - living in rural areas and poor Colombian municipalities. This project will also contribute to combating student desertion and Increase access to higher education for women in situations of socioeconomic or geographic vulnerability.

Develop materials that allow ICSEF women to carry out their professional education in gastronomy by using the Moodle platform and mirror materials in digital or printed versions, and thus complete their professional studies in gastronomy and overcome their geographical, social and economic limitations.

It will allow Colombian women in vulnerable conditions to access multimodal higher education without depending on an internet connection in their places of residence. In this way, it will permit them to increase the probability of starting a business in the gastronomic sector or obtaining a decent job, increasing their income, contributing to their family, and leading a decent life. The aim is to expand the organization´s current impact, going from 130 students to 1,000 in 5 years.

The challenge to ICSEF is to provide professional education to women in socioeconomic and geographic vulnerability to reduce inequality in which Colombian women in rural areas and poor municipalities in Colombia find themselves, allowing them access to quality education. Multimodal training will be the solution for women to realize their dream of being a professional in gastronomy.

The creation of an offline version of an educational platform to allow women with no access to internet services, to have access to higher education programs in Gastronomy. Besides, we will implement different training modalities. For instance, women will have the opportunity to develop their personal and professional gastronomic competencies by attending ICSEF in person. Where they find well-equipped workshops, classrooms, accommodation service if needed for their stay away from home, food and internet service. At ICSEF Campus they will receive an immersion that will allow you to learn to live with others, to use the tools of the profession. Once they return to her territory, with this knowledge, they will continue to develop her skills in an accompanied, guided and advised way where they will develop other important skills for life such as problem solving, discipline, commitment, perseverance, resilience, among others. The woman who decides, due to her conditions or limitations, not to participate in the face-to-face training may do it online or remotely.

Learning management system – LMS (Moodle) with well-designed learning content, in accordance with the objectives to be achieved and skills to be developed.

Within one year: 

Within a year we will benefit 100 women.

In five years: 

it is expected to have 1,000 women as beneficiaries.

First year: 

1.   To have the LMS installed and fully operational.
2.  To have 100% of the subjects of the academic gastronomy program completely online with their respective digitized and physical materials as constituent elements of the Toolbox for learning Gastronomy.
3.  To conserve 80% of the current ICSEF population; that is, having a student population of 100 women.
4.  To link 50 new women from rural areas of Sumapaz Province and poor municipalities in Colombia to ICSEF hospitality science training programs.

Within the next 5 years: 

1.  To have the permission of the Colombian National Ministry of Education to offer in multimodal training professional technical programs in gastronomy, in gastronomic services; food and drinks; Child and senior care and gastronomic product logistics services.
2.  To have a student population of at least 1000 Colombian women from rural areas and poor Colombian municipalities.

First year

1. Having the financial resources to start the LMS implementation process and the virtualization of content to offer ICSEF women with difficulties in accessing to internet, computers, tablets, smartphones the opportunity to continue their professional training .

2. Having the instructional design of the different units that make up each of the academic subjects that make up the Program Study Plan

3. Having the digitized mirror materials of the courses designed to be offered online.

Next five years:

Apply to the Ministry of National Education for the necessary permits to be able to offer the programs within this new modality of face-to-face multimodal training with remote assistance - virtual-blended - remote-dual.

1. Once the financial resources have been obtained, we would create alliances with higher education institutions with experience in virtual education and distance education. This alliances would permit us to get support from them in the instructional design for the development of the different subjects that make up the Study Plan.

2. Through the development of distance programs with the support of the ICSEF curricular team and developing all the materials required to be uploaded to the platform.

1. I have over 40 years of service to Colombian higher education in positions of both academic and administrative responsibility.

2. ICSEF has been training socially and economically disadvantaged women for 22 years with resources from private entities and particular persons who are convinced that by educating a woman an entire family is educated and society is transformed.

3. The ICSEF has teachers with the capacity to enter virtual and distance education.

4. The ICSEF has formed part of the Sponsor Plan offered by the Ministry of National Education as part of the contingency plan for preventive isolation to face the pandemic, maintaining social distancing and the alternation between face-to-face moments and moments of face-to-face with remote assistance.

5. ICSEF has trained more than 1,000 women in the Sumapaz Province, a vulnerable rural region in Colombia.

Offer rural women in the Sumapaz Province and poor municipalities in Colombia the possibility of accessing to technical, technological and professional education programs offered by the ICSEF in the hospitality sciences - gastronomy, hospitality, personal care.

Service as a third sector of the economy, from your home, whether or not you have an internet connection, through an LMS and its respective mirror when technological conditions require it by creating a Learning System with multimodal training.

The students cover the semester fee of the enrollment which corresponds to $400 USD (approx.) for the technical and technological cycles. According to their socioeconomic conditions, they can access institutional financial support or financing means through government entities or the financial system. They can make use of an accommodation service offered by ICSEF during the face-to-face period.

The business model is sustainable because it requires an initial investment for the development of the virtual courses corresponding to each subject of the program's study plan. As the programs are developed over time, the virtual courses will be updated according to the advances in science and technology.

It is a proposal that requires an initial investment for the implementation of the platform,  the development of the courses or subjects that constitute the curriculum, and digital and printed material that will conform each of the program modules. The ICSEF will reach its minimum financial equilibrium point when it has a student population of 250 women. We believe that with a multimodal modality such as the one proposed, it will be possible to achieve it within two years by reducing the cost of the education process for our students.

Likewise, the fixed costs of ICSEF will remain stable since the permanent population in times of coronavirus on campus will be less than or equal to the current one. With this type of modality we will reach a greater number of women, and with that increase of beneficiaries and financial resources we could subsidize the enrollment fee of some students. This fee, is among one of the lowest in the country, taking into account that we are a private institution with outstanding conditions of physical infrastructure and technological.