With an initial offer of 15 courses in this modality, the Office has begun the execution of its first course.

Faced with the COVID-19 pandemic, the units of the University of La Serena have adapted to delivering their different services remotely. One of these cases is the work carried out by the Training Office, which from its beginning had opted for in-person training and which today is renewed in a new service that contemplates the possibility of distance education, through virtual classes.

On this occasion, the course that started this challenge was “Design, Implementation and Application of Quality Assurance Plans for Construction Projects”, taught by the academic and Director of the Construction Engineering career, Mg. Rodrigo Olivares.

The offer includes courses in different areas, designed to deliver an experience with the same quality as always, backed by certification in the Chilean quality standard 2728:2015, giving the community the possibility of investing in the training of new skills from home. , protecting his health.

The courses are live, in real time, and at times established according to the calendar. The first of them started its classes successfully, filling the total number of available seats, and with perfect performance of the platform.

The person in charge of the ULS Training Office, Eng. Pablo Sánchez, referred to this new modality, the advances of the Office in recent years and the successful start of the online course. “Today we have managed to put the entire service chain on the network; It has been hard work that, due to the contingency, was possible to accelerate in this last stage. The immediate impact is to address the current state of social isolation of those people who seek to improve their employability or enhance their knowledge,” he assures.

Finally, Sánchez maintained that "once this is overcome, it will also allow us to make the University available to each of the locations in the region, and why not say the entire country, where they have access to the internet."

Written by Jenifer Araya, DIVEULS

Its members have worked in online meetings every week to continue developing an active action plan, in order to protect the health of the university community and citizens.

A few days after the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Chile, the Academic Council of the University of La Serena requested the formation of a commission whose priority was the development of an epidemiological surveillance protocol to face possible cases of COVID-19 contagion within the university. institution. The development and implementation of this surveillance protocol (preparation and response plan, March 2020) was the first of several actions carried out to date by this commission, made up of academic and non-academic authorities and officials of the ULS, including experts of the health area.

The Vice Chancellor of Economic and Administrative Affairs, Dr. Armando Mansilla, who heads this commission, along with evaluating the work carried out by its members, pointed out that after the implementation of said protocol and the decision that ULS officials could carry out their duties in remote, we have worked in online meetings every week to continue developing an active action plan, in order to protect the health of the university community and citizens.

In this sense, one of the actions carried out in this period was the update of the COVID-19 epidemiological surveillance protocol (April), according to new MINSAL regulations for safe community procedures; in addition to the preparation of protocols for cleaning and disinfecting surfaces for cleaning personnel, care staff in institutional kindergartens, and requesting and delivering prevention material.

As the Vice Chancellor specifies, this commission has generated surveillance within the ULS to detect suspicious or positive cases and a control system to see if the protocol is being complied with, as well as the use of security implements and verification of availability. of security supplies.

The implementation of an active epidemiological surveillance system, with daily minutes with epidemiological data and evolution of the outbreak in the world, country, region and University - with case monitoring and consultations from our university community - is another of the tasks in charge of the commission, as well as the attention of the institutional health phone of the epidemiologist for consultations about ULS symptoms and prevention measures, the email responses of the commission and the coordination with different units of the house of studies.

Also noteworthy are the educational activities aimed at the community of the Coquimbo Region for health promotion during the pandemic, and the collaboration with updated information for the BIG DATA ULS (COVID-19 cases and emergency consultations in the region), among other actions that, like the surveillance protocol and security measures, have been disseminated to the community with the support of the Strategic Communication Directorate.

For the ULS epidemiologist and member of the Commission, Dr. Paola Salas, “from the first day that cases of people positive for the virus appeared in the country, the University of La Serena dealt with the pandemic.”

The professional also highlights that the strategy implemented by the institution has been effective, allowing "to keep the situation of transmission or spread under control, providing timely and real information on the risks and going day by day preventing with hygiene and management measures that "minimize the risk of contagion among those who continue to work in person, promoting a state of greater 'security', which has allowed us to generate numerous beneficial effects for our own community."

Finally, the academic values ​​the strategies aimed at the external community “in our role of linking with the environment, which has been demonstrated and validated by citizens, where the State University of the region has as its main objective to contribute to maintaining the health of the population in activities to promote and prevent this infectious disease that has hit us hard as a society in our country and world.”

This document is a product of the FONDECYT Regular project 1180918 of the responsible researcher Dr. Pablo Castro (ULS) and the co-investigators, Ingrid González (ULS), David Cuadra (UDA) and Cristián Oyanadel (UDEC).

One of the great concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about is how students and teachers at different levels have had to face distance education, the rigor it implies, the commitment and organization of time.

Under the parameters mentioned above, two academics from the University of La Serena, Dr. Pablo Castro and Mg. Ingrid González, both educational psychologists, were co-authors of the “Guide to support tele-education: Suggestions for teachers in times of social isolation”, which was born as an initiative by the researcher at the University of Atacama (UDA) Mg. David Cuadra, and was also joined by academic Dr. Cristián Oyanadel, from the University of Concepción (UDEC).

This guide gives specific advice on how teachers and students can take this stage of teleeducation optimally and positively face the different challenges that it entails.

According to researchers, one of the problems of online education is trust and credibility in this educational modality: to generate an adequate disposition and reduce uncertainty, it is very important to explain to students the objective of online education, its scope and limitations. ; in addition to all the reasons for its implementation.

The Mg. Ingrid González points out that "it is always significant to be able to provide, from psychology, some guidelines that may be useful, in this case, for teaching telework. Part of the work of psychology is precisely that, guiding actions, based on the evidence that can be used in complex and changing situations like the one we are experiencing".

Likewise, Dr. Pablo Castro assures that “as co-author of the guide, we believe that it can help managers, teachers and in general those who must manage tele-teaching processes today, to do so with realism, an educational sense and based on reality. of teaching work regarding how they experience their time, as our studies show.”

In the guide you will find 17 suggestions to support teachers in the management and use of time in online teaching.

The document is available at https://tstiempodeeducar.wixsite.com/misitio/biblioteca-virtual and in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub-pajeMmaE&rel=0

Written by Patricia Castro, DirCom

Dr. Haylen Perines gave the talk “How to publish about teaching in higher education?”, in a webinar organized by the University of Viña del Mar.

The importance of publishing about teaching in higher education, the benefits it has for teaching practice itself, what can be published, where it can be published and the main obstacles to carrying it out, were the topics discussed by the researcher from the University of La Serena, Dr. Haylen Perines, in her talk “How to publish about teaching in higher education?”, during the webinar “Teaching+Research: a challenge for improving the quality of teaching in Higher Education”, organized by the University from Viña del Mar.

This seminar had the participation of more than 60 people and was aimed at the students of the Master's Degree in Teaching for Higher Education and Applied Research at the UVM, taking place after the invitation of the Director of said program to the ULS researcher.

Regarding her presentation, Dr. Perines indicated that “My participation was very well received, considering that publishing about our teaching is a topic that arouses the interest of many academics and that continues to be an important challenge for everyone.” .

Written by Tomás Rodríguez, DirCom.

The section is part of the Data Intelligence project that the study house agreed with the Ministry of Education and aims to be a frequently consulted support for regional and local managers and decision makers in the field of health.

Determine the magnitude of the main health problems consulted in the emergency units of the Coquimbo Region and find patterns of behavior that guide timely and even early decision-making by local and regional health managers, is the purpose of the initiative. BIG DATA ULS was raised when creating this new module within the health area.

César Espíndola, executive director of the BIG DATA ULS project, comments that this new section “is part of a long-term journey that will put at the service of the main topics of regional interest for its development, the benefits of data intelligence, discipline "which has a lot to contribute to regional and local management, and which we at the University of La Serena share with the spirit of improving the quality of life of all its inhabitants."

With this new section, BIG DATA ULS strengthens its value proposition in the field of health -the most demanded these days in the COVID-19 context- and continues to feed the fields of education, demography, environment and economy with data.

The new health module, Urgent Care, contains the registry of emergency care by commune, establishment, causes, age groups and trends, from 2015 to April 2020, in graphic displays and descriptive analyzes that allow health managers to public health, compare the behavior of their health centers and have data to prospect scenarios.

For Dr. Paola Salas, epidemiologist at the ULS and collaborator of the BIGDATA project, “the main focus is to provide information to the authorities and general population about the emergency care registered by the Department of Statistics and Information of the Ministry of Health of Chile - DEIS MINSAL- and consolidate emergency care information, arranged for easy territorial use, allowing the attention to health demand to be described.”

The academic explains that this platform allows us to identify what happens in emergency care in the region and the health problems consulted (causes of respiratory diseases, circulatory diseases, trauma, poisoning, etc.) in each location with a health center with emergency care.

He adds that "this registry will also serve to see the citizens' feelings about access to the health system and the degree of solution to their most urgent problems, which may even be minor, but that the population demands for timely care." what they legitimately consider is urgent to attend to”.

BIG DATA ULS is an initiative of the University of La Serena, financed by the Regional Higher Education Line of the MINEDUC and which aims to contribute to decision-making and public debate of the different economic, productive, social and educational actors at based on the integration and interactive and interoperable visualization of public data series of interest for regional and national development.

The new module is available in https://bigdatauls.userena.cl/salud/atenciones-urgencia/

Written by Patricia Castro, DirCom

The first session was held during the week of April 20 and those interested in participating can contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

After the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in our country, the University of La Serena instructed the development of its functions in remote mode. Thus, teleworking has become a new way of carrying out the usual functions of support and delivery of tools. To this end, the Graduate Monitoring Office (OSE), with the aim of providing support to the institution's graduates and graduates, has enabled in its Skills Strengthening area the option of performing different services remotely and free of charge.

Recently, the first online counseling session for job placement was developed, where it was possible to bring the human experience closer through technology.

In this sense, the graduate of Industrial Civil Engineering, Eduardo Campos, commented on his experience: “It was a super good meeting, we were able to talk about my experience in job interviews, I have many tips now to improve the resume and to give a better job interview".

Additionally, Eduardo shares a message with the other graduates from the University of La Serena. “As a university graduate, I believe that we should not forget what was our Alma Mater, our university and that, although we are already graduates and go out into the working world, they continue to give us help and tools. I think we have to take advantage of these options and continue being participants as alumni.”

It is worth mentioning that the employment situation is being difficult for graduates, given that they face a highly impacted labor market, initially by the social movement and later by the health emergency facing the entire country; variables that were addressed in the session by the professional OSE, Ps. Maximiliano Jiménez, and highlighted by the former student. “The session was beneficial, especially now that many interviews will be conducted by video call. It is a good opportunity to improve the way of expressing oneself, the way of talking with people, improving the space in which the interview takes place, knowing that there are domestic situations that cannot be controlled. Without a doubt good elements to consider, I recommend this workspace to everyone.”

This modality is open to ULS graduates and graduates and you can request it by contacting This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by entering the phoenix.cic.userena.cl platform.

Written by Jenifer Araya, DIVEULS