Commons: the academic network that has kept growing for a decade

In 2016, teaching teams from INACAP, the University of Talca, the University of Chile and the Catholic University joined the first cohort of Commons, alongside colleagues from Universidad La Salle Noroeste in Mexico. They arrived with a question that still drives the network: how do you teach social impact from within a higher education institution?

Commons was born as an online accelerator, developed with Ashoka, to connect and prepare teams of academics, senior leaders and staff of higher education institutions in social innovation. It was not a course for individuals: it was a programme for institutional teams, each carrying a project of their own from idea to implementation.

One cohort after another

What started as an experiment became a rhythm. Eight editions later, the Commons network gathers more than 160 academics from over 40 higher education institutions across Latin America and Europe: public and private universities, professional institutes and technical training centres from Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Spain and Finland.

Each cohort followed the same logic: three months of intensive training and four months of follow-up, with modules on trends, institutional mapping and project design. The team format made the difference: when the programme ended, the team stayed inside the institution, with a project under way and a peer network across the continent.

What we learned

Real transformation happens in educators, not in curricula. A curriculum can change in one board meeting; teaching practices change when the people who teach have tools, community and permission to experiment.

That is why Commons did not end with a certificate, but with a network. A decade later, academics from the first cohort still collaborate with colleagues they met in the programme, and several of the participating institutions became long-term allies of 2811.

We believe in institutions capable of connecting learning, innovation and real impact. Commons is proof that this conviction, sustained over time, becomes infrastructure: a network that keeps growing.

Would you like to explore what a programme like this could open at your institution? Let’s talk.