RUSC. Universities and Knowledge Society Journal

Editorial

2015-07-16T19:58:09+02:00

Digital literacy for teachers in Cuban Tourism and Hotel Management Schools. Some experiences on its development

2015-07-13T21:51:03+02:00

Digital literacy for teachers has been a widely studied topic in recent years, and several studies have been conducted featuring student-oriented ICT competency models and frameworks. This research aims to develop a teacher-oriented ICT Competency Framework for Cuban Tourism and Hotel Management School instructors, on the one hand, to have reference points or criteria to make an assessment on the actual status of ICT training and, on the other hand, to provide guidelines on ICT training for teachers. The main research method for this paper was document analysis. The proposed model states that ICT training for teachers has to be undertaken on a continuous basis. Incorporating new tools into the teachers’ professional environment is a critical matter to be taken into consideration for any type of teacher training model in the 21st century. Furthermore, some examples on the main courses and training sessions that are part of the Teacher ICT Training Research Project are provided. It may be concluded that a teacher-oriented ICT Competency Framework for the context of Cuban Tourism and Hotel Management Schools was attained.

Assessing the impact of the “Entrepreneurs” education programme on participants’ entrepreneurial intentions

2015-07-13T21:51:03+02:00

The study of students’ entrepreneurial intentions and the influencing factors is especially relevant for the development of education programmes, as is the monitoring of those programmes to assess whether they are effective and what their impact has been. Building upon insights from Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour, a control-group longitudinal design was used to investigate the impact of participation in the “Entrepreneurs” programme, offered by the University of Castilla-La Mancha, in Spain, with the sponsorship of regional institutions. The methodology involved the completion of a questionnaire at the end of the course and a follow-up questionnaire six months later to establish if the effect of the course had been maintained or not after this period. The study found that participants in the programme had higher levels of self-efficacy at the end of it, and that these levels had been maintained over time. They also displayed greater entrepreneurial intention after a period of time than non-participants. However, after six months, the participants perceived greater difficulties in the environment, thus reducing the feasibility of entrepreneurship as a career option. Despite this, entrepreneurial intention was higher than for the control group and increased over time with regard to creativity. The conclusions and implications of these results are discussed in the final section of this paper.

Twitter as a resource to evaluate the university teaching process

2015-07-13T21:51:03+02:00

The widespread use of social networks among college students has an excellent potential for academic purposes. The university has in its own students an important source of information that can be used to evaluate the quality of its services, and social networks provide a great assessment tool. The purpose of the study is to analyse an experiment based on the use of Twitter in the daily evaluation of the teaching process and its impact on the students. One hundred and forty-five students voluntarily and, if they so wanted, anonymously, participated in the experiment. They evaluated each of the classes through tweets. The students’ perceptions of the usefulness of Twitter for evaluating the teaching process was analysed through a questionnaire with open and closed questions. The main findings of the research showed considerable satisfaction with the process followed in the subject. There was also a modest positive evaluation in assessing the incorporation and use of Twitter for academic purposes. It is concluded that Twitter can be a useful tool for students to evaluate the teaching process and that Twitter is highly suitable for incorporation into the university sphere.

Methodological proposal for the application of international benchmarking in order to assess the quality of virtual higher education

2015-07-13T21:51:03+02:00

This research focuses on providing a benchmarking methodology that allows any university offering virtual education (e-learning or b-learning) to compare itself to the best international universities in order to improve the quality of the virtual education offered. In order to verify the adequacy of the proposed methodology, it has been applied to the Polish Virtual University (PUW). On the other hand, the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) was chosen as the leading partner university. The benchmarking performed has allowed the author to obtain solid results in order to draw up and implement a complete action plan for improvement, which will make it possible to increase, in the short and medium terms, the quality of the virtual education offered by PUW. It is therefore concluded that the proposed benchmarking methodology is adequate in order to assess and improve the quality of virtual higher education.

Teaching methodology used in the master’s degree programme for secondary education teacher training: student assessment

2015-07-13T21:51:03+02:00

This study analyses future secondary school teachers’ perceptions of the teaching methodology used in a teacher training master’s degree programme. A descriptive study was designed and the data were collected by adapting the “Questionnaire to evaluate university professors’ teaching and assessment methodology” (n=252). Students achieve better results under the learning-centred model, which is related to the constructivist and student-centred system, rather than a traditional teaching-centred model, which is related to the teacher whose task is to expose information to students.

21st-Century Instructional Designers: Bridging the Perceptual Gaps between Identity, Practice, Impact and Professional Development

2015-07-13T21:51:03+02:00

The purpose of this paper is to discuss instructional designers’ current status through a brief discussion of the history of instructional design, comparison of instructional design models, and a presentation of a perspective on how instructional designers cope with their current identity and profession while seeking professional development. In this paper, we identified various reasons for addressing why professional development effort is less than ideal for instructional designers. These include a lack of priority given to professional development at an organization level, budget and funding, individual workload, and departmental visions and priorities. In order to address and overcome these factors, we recommend an instructional designer community of practice within institutions. As the landscape of education is constantly transforming, the designers’ field cannot stay static. To respond to all the changes, instructional designers not only need to strive for continuous learning but also to adopt a more collaborative practice, where they can share and exchange ideas and best practices.

Relationship between hours spent on the Internet and Web 2.0 in Higher Education

2015-07-16T19:44:10+02:00

This article analyses the relationship between the number of hours spent by university students on the Internet and their attitude, training, use, impact and perception of difficulties in Web 2.0 integration, as well as their knowledge and use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. To this end, we used a Likert scale applied to a sample of 403 students from the University of Huelva (UHU), Spain. To test the hypothesis, we conducted a one-way ANOVA with post hoc comparisons. The results obtained partially confirmed the general hypothesis. The greatest differences were found in the factors of impact and use of Web 2.0 tools, whereas the least differences were found in the factors of attitude, training, difficulties and knowledge of Web 2.0 tools.

Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics: differences, similarities, and time evolution

2015-07-16T19:46:44+02:00

Technological progress in recent decades has enabled people to learn in different ways. Universities now have more educational models to choose from, i.e., b-learning and e-learning. Despite the increasing opportunities for students and instructors, online learning also brings challenges due to the absence of direct human contact. Online environments allow the generation of large amounts of data related to learning/teaching processes, which offers the possibility of extracting valuable information that may be employed to improve students’ performance. In this paper, we aim to review the similarities and differences between Educational Data Mining and Learning Analytics, two relatively new and increasingly popular fields of research concerned with the collection, analysis, and interpretation of educational data. Their origins, goals, differences, similarities, time evolution, and challenges are addressed, as are their relationship with Big Data and MOOCs.

Log Analysis in a Virtual Learning Environment for Engineering Students

2015-07-16T19:49:45+02:00

The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) at different educational levels has impacted the teaching-learning process. ICTs have effectively become tools that support educational environments and, hence, have become educational technology. Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are widely used, offering advantages to both students and instructors. Different platforms include various activity modules, within which collaborative learning communities are built, file sharing and grade handling are facilitated, and navigation log statistics are provided. These logs shed light on the daily use of the platform. The resulting information creates an overview of users’ online navigation characteristics and preferences. Through the analysis of these navigation logs, relevant information can be extracted that may help in understanding the teaching-learning processes within VLEs. In this study, the navigation logs of students enrolled in a course offered at a School of Engineering were analyzed. The objective of this project was to analyze the characteristics of the students’ navigation by identifying, summarizing and characterizing the way in which they interact with the platform. Based on the results, it is inferred that students apply different learning strategies and follow individualized navigation paths.

Temporal learning analytics visualizations for increasing awareness during assessment

2015-07-16T19:52:46+02:00

Visual representations of student-generated trace data during learning activities help both students and instructors interpret them intuitively and perceive hidden aspects of these data quickly. In this paper, we elaborate on the visualization of temporal trace data during assessment. The goals of the study were twofold: a) to depict students’ engagement in the assessment procedure in terms of time spent and temporal factors associated with learning-specific characteristics, and b) to explore the factors that influence the teachers’ Behavioural Intention to use the proposed system as an information system and their perceptions of the effectiveness and acceptance of our approach. The proposed visualizations have been explored in a study with 32 Secondary Education teachers. We adopted a design-based research methodology and employed a survey instrument – based on the Learning Analytics Acceptance Model (LAAM) – in order to measure the expected impact of the proposed visualizations. The analysis of the findings indicates that a) temporal factors can be used for visualizing students’ behaviour during assessment, and b) the visualization of the temporal dimension of students’ behaviour increases teachers’ awareness of students’ progress, possible misconceptions (e.g., guessing the correct answer) and task difficulty.