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

The Tweets or messages published on the social network Twitter are understood as digital footprints that are produced by the interaction of people in digital environments. These footprints are generated both in formal education processes such as those conducted through Virtual Learning Environments, as well as in social interaction processes, typical of social media. In this study, the processes of concept representation and learning based on the production of tweets generated by three groups of third and fifth year university students were analyzed. This study of a mixed nature was carried out under the supervised learning approach that included two moments: one of instruction and the other of evaluation. The tweets were analyzed from three categories: content, container and context, as well as from the intellectual operations of conceptual thinking: supra-ordination, exclusion, under-ordination and iso-ordination. Additionally, the emotional tone of the tweets was analyzed using content analysis, text mining and sentiment analysis techniques. The results of the study indicate the possibility that fingerprints can be used as indicators of the processes of representation and learning of concepts, not only from the perspective of the linguistic and cognitive construction involved in learning and representing concepts, but also from the emotional conditions that occur through the interactions within a social network like Twitter. From there, conclusions related to the transformative potential of the use of fingerprints in education are discussed and addressed.

This paper presents the rationale and results of a gamification experiment based on serious games in the context of teaching the history of ideas. The study was conducted over 80 sessions of the Core Curriculum subject "Contemporary Civilization" -a history of Western philosophy from Plato to Freud- with four courses of 23 students, all of them taught at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile. All sessions took place through Zoom, during the context of the pandemic, i.e., between March 2020 and December 2021. Drawing on gamification theories and philosophical analyses on the cognitive powers of play, the playful activities implemented as well as their outcomes are presented. The research was carried out through a process of autoethnography to record the teaching experience in class. In addition, ethnography was used to record the sounds (spoken interventions) and texts (written interventions) reproduced in each session. As a result of the experiment, it is argued that the game allowed the development of essential skills for the critical understanding of the history of ideas: hermeneutic and intersubjective reasoning, historical imagination, a sense of contingency and the ability to contextualize.

Based on the conviction of the need to advance in the understanding of the processes and results of online learning, this Special Issue focuses on the evidence of student learning as a consequence of their participation in educational practices mediated by digital information and communication technologies. In the call, authors have been invited to present their research, paying special attention to aspects such as the environments in which educational practices are developed, the digital technologies used, the pedagogical methodologies used in their design and development, the types and characteristics of the learning achieved by the students, the research methodology used to obtain and analyze the evidence and, of course, the nature and characteristics of the learning evidence itself. The choice of this focus responds to the somewhat paradoxical fact that student learning outcomes, as well as the nature of the evidence that supports them, are relatively infrequent topics in research articles on online learning. In addition, the quality criteria and the value attributed to this evidence have varied over time and also change depending on the context. Within this framework, the works included in the Special Issue offer a diversity of approaches to these issues, while reflecting a rich overview of state of affairs in the Ibero-American region. In several of them, the pandemic or post-pandemic context of COVID-19 plays a prominent role.

The present research addresses the study of the impact of the use of metacognitive scaffolding on learning outcomes and participation in university students who study online. Based on a mixed research approach, the design of a metacognitive scaffolding based on a learning diary oriented to continuous reflection and its application in an experimental group is addressed. Through content analysis of the student’s reflections, the most important factors in the process of self-regulation are identified. Furthermore, the grades and participation of the students and the monitoring of their work on the digital platform are compared with a control group, with the aim of analyzing the impact of scaffolding on their results. From this experience, it is concluded that the application of metacognitive scaffolding as a self-regulation strategy has a significant impact in favor of the students during the development and monitoring of the subject, showing a higher level of involvement in the activities and use of digital tools. However, no significant differences were found in the results of the exams and the use of communication tools on the platform. In conclusion, the application of scaffolding can help to generate a more homogeneous overall learning experience among learners in the same group and, in turn, improve the results related to learning by doing.

Online university students, unlike traditional face-to-face university students, are primarily adults: with very varied starting points, they deal with obtaining a degree and professional and family responsibilities. In this context, we aim to study the behaviour profile of the students in a preparatory mathematics course for engineering online studies through the completion level of the different proposed activities, especially the non-compulsory ones, and their relationship with the academic achievement in the subject. This research has been carried out according to a non-experimental design, with quantitative nature and framed within ex post facto studies, in 6 virtual classrooms with 340 students. A cluster analysis with K-means method provides three groups which, in turn, let us identify three student profiles: efficient, dedicated and passive. These profiles are comparable to previous findings regarding participation and behaviour patterns in participants in MOOCs with similar characteristics to the participants in the present study. The results of this study validate the fundamental role that time and evaluation design play in the students’ learning strategies and stimulate the redesign of the course, especially the activities oriented to better achievement of passive students.

This research comes from an innovation project implemented in the Infant Education Teaching Degree of the University of Oviedo (Spain). It combines STEAM methodology and maker culture, through the design of Immersive Literary Environments (ILE) with Augmented Reality (AR). To be more concrete, the participants (N=162) designed physical environments, enriched with AR, which recreated the fictional world of children’s literature texts, complemented with a didactic programme. It is aimed here at assessing the didactic, digital, socio-collaborative and creative competences of the participants, as shown in the ILE, and to determine the relationship between the digital competence and the other competences involved. The validated instrument COMPASS-AR is employed, consisting of 30 indicators (α=0,977). The results show a high level in the didactic, socio-collaborative and creative competences. Although the mastery of technological tools is high, the digital competence reaches a medium-high level, due to the limited integration of self-made resources. There is a high correlation between all the competences involved in the ILE design, especially the digital and creative ones. This strong relation between competences highlights the integrative character of the proposal, for the global development of all of them. It also reveals the necessity of stimulating the creativity of future teachers, as well as their mastery of emerging technologies to create original resources adapted to the educational context. In conclusion, these projects are extremely interesting for didactic and technological training of teachers, as they combine innovative methodologies, such as STEAM and maker culture.

In Higher Education, hybrid sessions have been implemented in higher education that may remain in place beyond the times of teaching emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This mixed modality presents several uncertainties among teachers and students. Especially in the first case, questions arise about how to design the lesson sequencing, which platforms to use, among many others. This research aims to study the perceptions of teachers and students about interactive synchronous videoconferences, carried out by 5 coordinating teachers of 3 different subjects of the Faculty of Education of the University of Barcelona. The tools used are Bb Collaborate to manage the videoconference and Nearpod to present the learning content and the interactive activities that favor the interaction among students and with the contents. A qualitative analysis of the teachers’ perception of the design and development of the sessions has been carried out through self-reporting and a sample of 82 students from the learning analytics and an online form with open questions. The results indicate that this methodology is adequate with the students' way of learning, increasing their participation. The results indicate that the teachers do not appreciate significant differences with respect to the preparation of the sequencing lesson plan of expository classes, although the level of teachers' digital competence is a key factor. Students and teachers value positively the information in the learning analytics of the platform. These positive results may encourage teachers to use this type of pedagogical approaches and tools based on interactivity.  

The virtual training programs, at the higher education level, have been experiencing continuous growth, providing study opportunities to a group of students who previously had no access to them. One example is the students of professional and technical-professional careers as working adults, a group to which the students of the higher education institution studied belong. Retention rates in this modality are still low and it is necessary to deepen with respect to academic indicators. Online teaching seems to be a key element in the improvement of training processes in this modality. The objective of this research was to identify the relationship between students' perceptions of the facilitating role of the teacher and the academic results of the subjects. It is an exploratory, descriptive and correlational research, with a sample of 31240 students, corresponding to the universe of the institution studied. Data mining and survey study were used as techniques. The multivariate clustering technique, Spearman correlation coefficient and Kruskal-Wallis mean differences were applied for the analysis. It is observed that seven questions show significant differences in relation to the three clusters in which the subjects were grouped, according to high, medium and low academic results. The existence of a relationship between the academic indicators and some key aspects of online teaching such as the incorporation of complementary material, cordiality in the treatment, quality of the answers in a timely manner and detailed feedback is established.

This article presents an investigation to define the parameters that guide the construction of pedagogical models (PM) based on transversal digital competences (DC) for distance learning (DL). A qualitative research approach was implemented in three stages: 1. a theoretical survey to build the initial parameters; 2. a case study of a course with teachers to apply the initial parameters; and 3. definition of the final parameters based on data comparison and analysis. A relationship was established between the concepts of pedagogical models, digital competences, and distance learning. Data was collected through questionnaires, interactions, and activities carried out during the course, which made it possible to identify the teachers' profile and the parameters for the pedagogical model based on digital competences. The data was analyzed, categorized, and treated for interpretation. Two categories were defined: pedagogical model to construct the digital competences and digital competences in distance learning. As a result, parameters were defined, in a framework, to assist in the construction of a pedagogic model based on digital competences in a gradual, integrated, and transversal way that can be used in any distance learning area, course, or discipline. The results of this work demonstrate that the proper construction of a PM consists in properly using technological tools based on digital competences. Furthermore, teachers must gain competences through training. This new approach, treating digital competences as transversal in the pedagogical model and its inclusion in institutional educational systems, aims at fostering teacher training through the construction of digital competences in education.

In recent years, changes have taken place in higher education due to the adaptation to the European Higher Education Area and digitalisation, implying an evident need to adapt teaching methodologies to the new context. In accordance with this idea, the present research focuses on the analysis of teaching methodologies that make use of digital technologies in higher education context.For this purpose, a systematic literature review using the PRISMA methodology was carried out in four databases of international relevance (Web of Science, Scopus, Educational Resources Information Center and Dialnet), starting with 107 documents and filtering 23 that were then analyzed with the qualitative software MAXQDA. The results indicate that in recent years there has been an increase in publications on the subject and that the methodological options most frequently used are, for example, group work, problem-based learning, and examinations. In this sense, most proposals imply a substitute use of digital technologies by teachers and a component of creative use by students. In short, this is an essential topic of interest. Furthermore, perhaps it’s important also point out the fact that identifying what practices are implemented and gaining knowledge of the precedents may be valuable for further improvement of the teaching-learning processes.