Experiences to Work in the Professors’ Cloisters as a Work Environment that Improves Teaching Practices

The positive experiences shared among professors allow them to be passionate about teaching, creating an appropriate work environment and developing proposals that result in good practices that benefit students in their learning processes. The effective union of professors, from a professional and academic environment, has led to the formation of groups that were initially small to form large teams grouped in an area of knowledge or educational field. The objective of this work is to present the experiences of collaborative work in groups of professors called “cloisters” that work in an Ecuadorian polytechnic university. An empirical-analytical research methodology is developed, with a longitudinal quasi-experimental approach. A process that has taken four years since October 2019, during eight semesters of continuous work up to the present (from academic period 55 to academic period 62). The development phases marked in five achievable goals by the academic coordination of the Guayaquil branch of the Universidad Politécnica Salesiana del Ecuador are shown. The results show a total participation of 162 professors, grouped in 32 cloisters and in 8 areas of knowledge. The work of two faculty members who have generated proposals to be replicated by others is presented. A total of eight academic and research products have been generated from the collaborative work of a faculty of professors. Finally, the percentage of students who passed the Linear Algebra and Programming courses reached 89% in the Linear Algebra courses and 85% in the Programming courses.