Despite the plethora of studies reported during the last decade in relation to educational innovation in teaching and assessment of competencies, a consensus is seemingly lacking on a definition that establishes the scope and boundaries competency assessment. This research gap motivated a systematic review of the literature published on the topics of “educational innovation in teaching” and “assessment of competencies” in upper secondary and higher education during the period from January 2016 to March 2021. The main objective of the study was to define and evaluate educational innovation in teaching and assessment of competencies in upper secondary and higher education following PRISMA guidelines for a systematic literature review (SLR) on a curated corpus of 320 articles. We intended to answer the following questions: (1) What do “educational innovation in teaching” and “assessment of competencies” represent for upper secondary and higher education? (2) How are they evaluated? Lastly, (3) are efforts exerted toward the standardization of transversal competencies? The SLR seeks answers to these questions by examining nine research sub-queries. The result indicated that the greatest effort toward educational innovation in competencies was made at the higher education level and targeted students. Competencies were revised through associations with the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda. In addition, the methodologies used for teaching and evaluation of competencies were reviewed. Finally, the study discussed which technologies were used to develop the proficiencies of students.

COVID-19 forced billions of people to restructure their daily lives and social habits. Several research projects have focused on social impacts, approaching the phenomenon on the basis of different issues and scales. This work studies the changes in social relations within the well-defined urban-territorial elements of co-housing communities. The peculiarity of this research lies in the essence of these communities, which base their existence on the spirit of sharing spaces and activities. As social distancing represented the only effective way to control the outbreak, the research studied how the rules of social distancing impacted these communities. For this reason, a questionnaire was sent to 60 communities asking them to highlight the changes that the emergency imposed on the members in their daily life and in the organization of common activities and spaces. A total of 147 responses were received and some relevant design considerations emerged: (1) the importance of feeling part of a “safe” community, with members who were known and deemed reliable, when facing a health emergency; and (2) the importance of open spaces to carry out shared activities. Overall, living in co-housing communities was evaluated as an “extremely positive circumstance” despite the fact that the emergency worsened socialization.

Social innovation has been gaining attention as an alternative method for defining socially constructed problems and their solutions in times of failure of more conventional methods. This study focused on the potential of undergraduate architecture students for social innovation in public space production. A novel collaborative educational method was proposed based on a conceptual framework of social extrapreneurs’ platforms of exploration, experimentation and execution, and problem-based learning. The method was designed for 90 h synchronous and 90 h asynchronous work, in a remote teaching mode. The benefit of the method was foreseen in improving the social processes of public space production, especially in areas with pronounced discrimination. Social innovation in planning is crucial for the capacity of imagining better futures in the context of a system’s evolutionary resilience and has the potential for democratization of public place design. Preliminary results show that the proposed method enables critical thinking, sets the base of action on social justice, and turns students into active agents of social change; thus, it provides an important contribution to the necessary, but still uncharted, paradigm shift in architectural education from an object- to people-driven design.

In the past five decades, global food systems have undergone a notable transition, moving from predominantly rural settings to increasingly urban and industrialized environments, largely driven by processes of globalization and supply chain integration. However, this evolution has not adequately addressed equitable access to nutritious diets and food environments, resulting in adverse health outcomes. This study delves into the spatial and non-spatial barriers that impede the adoption of healthy diets in the Noreste of Mexico, particularly focusing on the challenges associated with accessing and cultivating plant-based foods. Through an examination of suitable areas for urban agriculture and an exploration of the socio-cultural factors influencing the adoption of plant-based diets, the research focuses on interventions aimed at promoting healthier and more sustainable eating practices in Monterrey. The findings of the study reveal significant disparities in food access across the Monterrey metropolitan area, with central urban zones exhibiting superior access to fresh foods compared to suburban and peripheral regions. This inequality disproportionately affects marginalized areas characterized by higher poverty rates, exacerbating issues of food insecurity. Nevertheless, traditional dietary practices could offer promising avenues for creating culturally significant and healthier dietary transitions, even amidst the ongoing process of urbanization.