THE STUDENTS' INVESTIGATION COMPETENCE FORMATION IN GUAYAQUIL UNIVERSITY

The lack of a strategy that considers investigation as its central axis led to a deterioration of the development of the students' investigation competence in Guayaquil University. The research activity has been done without the appropriate integration of the university community, which is a crucial factor in this sense. The objective of the present paper is to present the results of the application of a strategy to develop the students' investigation competence, involving the university community actors. The main resource of the strategy was SENESCYT Awards Competition to reward third-level research. Such Methods as analytic-synthetic, inductive-deductive, hypothetical-deductive and systemic, in their interaction with the interview, survey and participant observation contributed to the planning, execution and control of the actions of the strategy. This also drove to the realization of an internal competition UG Awards with the participation of 419 papers in 2015 -2017. The training provided by professors-researchers, posters presentations as well as written and oral presentation of the papers, contributed to the development of the participating students' investigative competence and the university community's investigation culture in general.