Systematization of the Experience of Engineering Students as Facilitators of Free Cartography Workshops

The free cartography workshops are pedagogical activities of university extension, in which computer engineering students visit primary and secondary schools in Costa Rican rural communities evaluated with a low Social Development Index, to carry out a horizontal exchange of knowledge. University students offer free cartography knowledge —combining social cartography with free software and open data technology— while primary and secondary students contribute with their local knowledge about the community, to determine what's relevant to collectively represent on the map. This paper is centered on the experience of engineering students as facilitators of four workshops held in different communities during 2018. The Experience Systematization Methodology was followed with the objective of understanding how participation on the workshops influences the integral formation of the facilitating group; particularly in relation to the development of interpersonal skills and the ability to contextualize their own professional practice in the social reality of the country. It was observed that the experience promotes the development of interpersonal skills of teamwork, oral expression and dialogical communication. There is also evidence of social, cultural and economical differences recognition by the facilitating group members between the visited communities and their own. However, it is not possible to confirm a generalized critical reflection from the facilitators in relation to the potential contribution of computing to the solution of problems in the visited communities. This work proposes a series of improvements to the workshops methodology aiming to encourage facilitators to reflect on different key points of the development of the experience.