New Tecnologies In Higher Education: Teachers’ Perception And Academic Achievement Among Students

Author(s):

Granado Carmen(presenting / submitting)Nardiz Antonia Carrasco Ana

Conference:

ECER 2012

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Poster

Session Information

16 SES 05.5 PS, General Poster Exhibition

General Poster Session during Lunch

Time:

2012-09-19

12:30-14:00

Room:

FCEE - Poster Exhibition Area

Chair:

Contribution

One of the main teacher’s worries also present at different scientific forums refers to the appropriate method or methods improving learning among student in higher education. At present, Universities are progressively incorporating new technologies for both teachers and students and some of them like University of Huelva are also introducing parallel teaching methods like second language of instruction. These changes drives us to think about the influence that these new development has on students’ learning process. With regard to new technologies, some research point up the use favours a more active students’ roll within the teaching-learning process, facilitating the acquisition of technique terminology and improving the conceptual and procedural complexity of the activities they develop (Torreblanca & Rojas-Drummond, 2010). According to these results, other researchers defend CITs utilization on competences development due to not only of learning-process improvement but also because promotes alternative ways of working among students like works in group, collaborative learning or working in nets (Trujillo, Raso & Hinojos, 2009) and because is a kind of methodology that facilitates communication between teachers and students and increases students’ motivation and active participation (Palomares, Fernández, Modroño et al., 2007). However and in spite of new technologies seem to be a didactic methodology fully integrated in Higher Education, some authors maintain that its pedagogy used remains at the background (Alba y Carballo, 2005). As a example, Guerra, González & García (2010) refer that teachers at the University do not consider the image a an important didactic resource. Therefore, platform virtual and Webs publications like Open Course Ware (OCW), WeebCT or Moodle are scarcely used even though teachers recognize its importance an important tool of communication with students. This work also points up the fact that not all Spanish Universities are equally interested in using new technologies although it should be considered that these results are moderated, among other aspects, by teachers’ staff age, faculty or professorship. A favourable tendency toward using new technologies and specific software was observed among young teachers graduated as engineers or architect.

The University of Huelva backs to virtual teaching and learning and so that is immersed in several projects of virtualization like Andalusian Virtual Campus with the objective, among others, of promoting virtual teaching. This University is also making available to both teachers and students the use of moodle platform: access to blogs, forums or to a telematic and virtual teaching resources, etc.

In this work we examined the following objectives:

To explorer the use of CIT among teachers of the Faculty of Science Education at the University of Huelva (Spain).
To analyze teachers’ perception of introducing new technologies as teaching tool.
To describe the association between the use of new technologies and students’ academic achievement.
To describe which variables are moderating the use of new technologies.

Method

The population under study comprised a total of 69 teachers imparting their subjects in Child and Primary School Degrees at the Faculty of Science Education from the University of Huelva (Spain) and the students studying these subjects (N=842). A stratified randomized sample with equal fixation was taken following statistical representative criterions. Sample was comprised by 45 teachers and 483 students. Confidence interval was 95%. Units of sampling were groups in each of the courses and teachers from both Child and Primary School Degrees. The steps for sampling were: 1) random selection of 3 out of the 5 groups at each of the three courses from Child and Primary Degrees; 2) random selection of the subjects within each group; 3) random selection of a fix number of teachers for each group and subject; 4) students from the group and chosen subjects. The used design is a descriptive-relational design and the instrument “Perpeption of the utility and level of CITs in High Education” is a self-made questionnaire mixing qualitative and quantitative questions (Donna & Mertens, 2009) referred to the virtual resources that University of Huelva has available to teachers and students.

Expected Outcomes

According to some previous and exploratory work, we found that teachers’ perception of virtual resources is positive in the sense that they recognize the utility it has for their teaching. Most of them agree that improves students’ motivation and learning process. In relation to other resources like implantation of virtual subject the major opinion is that they don´t know exactly how to do it and think that the Faculty should promote and support this way of teaching giving information, courses and recognizing it as a part of their work within their individual plan of teaching. Not many used virtual teaching. In the last academic course 2010-2011, only six subjects followed this methodology and only eight subjects, courses or masters are assigned to Andalusian Virtual Campus out of the fourteen in Almeria, twenty-three in Granada, thirty-three in Cádiz, sixty-four at the University of Pablo Olavide (Seville), eleven in Malaga and thirty-one in Jaen. With regard to the use of moodle platform most teachers use it with their students basically to give information or send material. High degree of interaction like access to chats, blogs, web conferences, forums, etc. is lower. Reasons ranged from just lack of interest to lack of knowledge.

References

Alba, C. & Carballo, F. (2005). Viabilidad de las propuestas metodológicas para la aplicación del crédito europeo por arte del profesorado de las Universidades españolas, vinculadas a la utilización de las TIC en la docencia y la Investigación. Revista de Educación, 337; 71-97. Donna M. Mertens (2009). Research and evaluation in education and psychology: integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Gallaudet University, USA: SAGE Publications. Guerra, S.; González, N. & García, R. (2010). Utilización de las TIC por el profesorado universitario como recurso didáctico. Comunicar. Revista Científica de Educomunicación, 35 (XVIII), 141-148. Palomares, T.; Fernández, K.; Modroño, J. I.; González, J. et al. (2007). Las tecnologías de la información y comunicación en la enseñanza universitaria: influencia sobre la motivación, el autoaprendizaje y la participación activa del alumno. Revista de Psicodidáctica, Vol. 12 (1), 51-77. Torreblanca, O. & Rojas-Drummond, S. (2010). Mediación tecnológica para el desarrollo de habilidades de observación en estudiantes de Psicología: un enfoque socioconstructivista. Perfiles Educativos 58, Vol. XXXII, Nº 127, 58-84. Trujillo, J.M.; Raso, F. & Hinojo, M. A. (2009). Competencias y nuevas estrategias metodológicas para abordar el espacio docente actual. Revista de Ciencies de L'Educació, 45, 63-90.

Author Information

Granado Carmen (presenting / submitting)

University of Huelva

Developmental and Educational Psychology

Huelva

Nardiz Antonia

University of Huelva, Spain

Carrasco Ana