Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article develops an experimental, cross-cutting, and descriptive analysis in which 'podcast didactics' is proposed. It has a monographic structure according to the contextualization, diagnosis and justification of an educational project, as a possible practical solution to a real problem in 8th graders, welcomed to PMAR (Learning and Performance Improvement Program) and enrolled in an Institute of Secondary Education of the Community of Madrid (Spain). An official program that is conceived as a measure of attention to diversity, with a specific methodology and academic programming. Thus, we opted for a qualitative participatory and dialogue-based action research, which builds on the perspectives and actions of the participants through the podcasting system. This helped to understand and deepen on the specific phenomenon of this study with the purpose of presenting an analysis of results and a series of conclusions. A practical process developed with these students, in the sociolinguistic field was undertaken to determine their cognitive and emotional progress, and to what extent teachers use innovative didactic materials, as an appropriate ludic strategy in the teaching learning- process.

In the digital society, connected sociability occurs through “platforms”, which combine the technical and symbolic dimensions. These social media allow the opportunity to communicate, interact or exchange products and services. The so-called ICRT (Relationship, Information and Communication Technologies), value the Relational Factor that occurs in any educommunicative process, in which the interactions allow the development of analysis, reflection and critical thinking, among the co-authors, through horizontal communication and collaborative construction. In the last decade, several activities have been carried out that have aimed to implement, in various undergraduate and graduate courses, learning from a holistic perspective using a multimedia dimension. As an analysis methodology, we propose the case study of the digital platform Entremedios, through the triangulation of discussion groups with graduates and in-depth interviews with managers. We were able to verify the aspects that could be improved through the results obtained, such as the expansion of the contents, greater frequency and greater professionalization, for the purpose of knowledge transfer of those who are preparing to become journalists at the University of Zaragoza. In conclusion, it is proposed to finish structuring the interaction with users in order to apply the relational philosophy of the medium to a greater extent. 

Teaching-learning processes have been suddenly and irremediably transformed by the consequences of COVID-19. Both educators and learners have been forced to adapt to unforeseen contextual and pedagogical needs, using virtual devices and environments to develop their didactic practices. These challenges have sometimes led to certain difficulties, but also to new opportunities for communication and access to information and knowledge. This research analyses the uses of digital platforms by both young people with disabilities as well as the specialists and families of a centre in the Region of Madrid to deal with this new reality. To this end, a questionnaire was applied and semi-structured interviews were conducted with different educational agents. The results highlight the benefits and barriers encountered during the process of adapting to the virtual modality abruptly imposed by the pandemic, as well as the changes that confinement has brought about in the use of digital devices and platforms. The conclusions point to the fact that today more than ever, digital inclusion implies social and educational inclusion. However, if we do not support it, we would be facing new forms of exclusion that are pronounced in this context of health emergency and social distancing. Therefore, media education is established as a key factor to avoid an increase in the digital gap among this group.

The audiovisual medium is so widespread that it was an educational bet in remote settings and now, notably, during the times of the pandemic. These well-used audiovisual resources enhance the possibilities of learning and retention. Despite the fact that, nowadays, many might think that these are obsolete resources, of low efficiency for learning in this digital society, they are still highly valued today. It was evident that radio and television had an outstanding relevance in times of confinement, so that no one was left behind, especially the most vulnerable groups. Today, digital systems can host, record and reproduce any type of audiovisual document, and the latter, both in synchronous and asynchronous format. Radio, in times of pandemic, was used as a flexible, massive, low-cost and long-range means of communication, as an alternative to the great advances in digital technologies, reaching all corners of the globe. Over the radio, the podcast has the advantage of being able to record and reproduce any type of audio content, with the possibility of repeated listening, pausing and going back. On the one hand, integrating hearing and sight, on the other hand, text, audio and images in the same educational resource, such as television and video, substantially enhance the didactic possibilities in any area of ​​knowledge, nature of the course and educational level. However, it must be concluded that the potential of these resources has not been exploited, far from it, sufficiently in educational settings. Synchronous videoconferencing seems to have integrated the possibilities of these tools obviating some of their problems and becoming a great complement to education.

Communication and relationship skills are relevant in academic and professional activity in professions aimed at helping others. The planning of training activities aimed at interaction with others (e.g. peers) facilitates the acquisition of these skills, especially when it is promoted through feedback, more accurate evaluative judgments and the regularization of the learning process. Having instruments that facilitate effective feedback contributes to the planning of these training tasks, tools that should inform about skills that participate in counseling. In addition, they facilitate the efficient evaluation of the acquisition and learning in large groups of students. One of these instruments can be the Communication Skills Questionnaire (HABICOM). In this paper, various methodological aspects related to the use of communication and relationship skills assessment instruments in interaction situations were examined. The results obtained in the proposed objectives suggest that: (1) The confirmatory factor analysis indicates that the factorial structure of HABICOM and levels of reliability and validity are acceptable once some items are eliminated; (2) These self-perceived abilities are similar in Psychology and Social Work students; (3) There is a relationship in the perception of the communication skills shown during the interaction in a self-applied or hetero-applied format; (4) The perception of the partner measured with the HABICOM correlates with the perception of the helping skills during the interaction; (5) The analysis of the student's skills through video is related to the skills identified by the partner.

This paper provides an overview on the origins and the evolution of educational television in Spain and, then, studies the current offer of the three main Spanish audiovisual groups, in order to assess the current situation. To achieve this purpose, we first carried out a literature review and, later, we applied a content analysis, being a specific methodology, to the television programming of Atresmedia, Mediaset and RTVE during the week between the 19th and the 25th of April, 2021. We have utilized an analysis sheet that allowed us to identify the main characteristics of the educational programs that are broadcasted in each channel (duration, broadcast schedule, frequency, genre, type of production and model of educational television, according to the categorization of Pérez Tornero, 2007). Based on the conducted research, it can be concluded that educational television in Spain is dominated by external production content and that the percentage of formats produced within the European Union (51,3%) and outside the EU (48,7%) are very similar. Another feature that has been identified is that television contents are expanded towards the digital arena, in the websites of the media groups within our sample. This dynamic confirms that there is an expansion of educational television towards new media, which can also be exploited for educational purposes. However, educational television in Atresmedia and Mediaset occupies a marginal space in Spanish television programming compared to RTVE.

In a context framed by an unstoppable process of digitization of higher education, the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) has become a catalyst for solutions to improve teacher professional development and student learning experiences. The audiovisual and multimedia contents continue to occupy a large part of the concern and relevance in the design of these courses. The objective of this work is to understand how the use of digital materials and resources applied in these digital environments occurs as a means of reflecting on the current challenges of teacher training in audiovisual and media competence. Using mixed research methods, an interpretive case study was developed from the innovation experiences of the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). Statistical data analysis of the technological platform was used, as well as analysis of the pedagogical discourse of the interviews with the faculty involved in the innovation projects. With all this, was carried out a process of triangulation and integration of quantitative and qualitative data. Among the main findings, it is shown that the production of audiovisual content pills was the most innovative and at the same time the most challenging aspect of the development of MOOC projects. More institutional investment is essential to address the difficulties that the audiovisual and media literacy of teachers imply.

Pandemic-forced remote teaching has highlighted the relevance of redesigning planification in order to transform face-to-face into online courses in higher education. Indeed, the type of e-learning activities, e-assessment and development of student-centred active learning tasks remains a challenge. In this work we investigated the academic performance of an online learning environment in a course with high number of enrolled students carried out in the pandemic context in 2020 and compared it to the 2019 face-to-face version of the course. The e-learning version of the course included some changes regarding the face-to-face to allow active student learning, digital learning environment, knowledge enforcement, and further exploitation of the available activities in the Moodle platform as for the face-to-face course, although the syllabus remained unchanged. This study finds both synchronous and asynchronous problem-solving based e-learning together with self-assessment and team-based continuous and individual questionnaire assessments to be valuable instructional methods that allowed higher student academic performance in comparison to the face-to-face academic student results. Furthermore, the academic performance was directly related to the student participation in both team-based and individual activities during the course, demonstrating that the adaptation of the face-to-face course to the e-learning environment was, at least, as efficient as the traditional course, despite student resistance to e-learning and e-assessment.

This study tested the software application Socrative, an online evaluation Student Response System (SRS) tool, in the subject of Statistics (degree of Biology). The main objective was to test whether its use improves both quantitative and qualitative results of students, and the efficiency of the teaching-learning process from the teacher’s point of view. Two Socrative tests were carried out and 66 students from a Faculty of Biology at Madrid region participated being divided into two experimental and two control groups. Student’s t-test for independent samples was used to analyse quantitative improvements in academic results. For qualitative aspects the Socrative assessment questionnaire for students, created by Wash, was applied. Moreover, a self-report questionnaire for teachers after using SRS tools, developed by Cheung et al., was administered and a semi-structured interview was conducted to analyse the teacher’s perception about the influence of the intervention. Results proved inconclusive regarding improvements in academic performance, showing significant improvements for the experimental group of the first Socrative test, but not for the second. Furthermore, the use of Socrative gained a more active participation of the teacher in the teaching-learning process improving the classroom dynamics and increased additionally motivation and participation of students and their subjective perception of learning more and in a simpler way.

The educational potential of audiovisual media has been the object of study, especially since the birth of television in the middle of the last century. Researchers have noticed the convenience of its use as an educational tool, given its ability to facilitate students' understanding of educational content through the images, sounds and graphics that they incorporate as language. For many years the focus of research on this topic was on conventional social media: cinema, radio and, above all, television. However, the definitive implementation of ICTs in educational processes, the emergence of the so-called multiscreen society and the new content distribution platforms have created a new media framework where traditional media are losing prominence in favor of new devices. mobile phones, the social web and social media. This new scenario has led to a substantial change in teaching methodologies and a profound transformation of the role of teachers and students. The prominence of educational audiovisual content, its formats adapted for mobile devices and the consolidation of the web as a formal or non-formal learning system are realities that have been reinforced by the COVID-19 pandemic. This monograph incorporates the perspectives of various researchers on the educational possibilities of sound, video and image in the current digital framework.