(700)THE IMPACT OF THE AIM-MOBILE LEARNING PLATFORM IN DIFFERENT HIGHER EDUCATION DISCIPLINES

摘要

Mobile learning and e-learning technologies have a strong presence and impact on different educationscenarios, and quite recently in Higher Education Degrees. In connection with it, BYOD (Bring-Your-Own-Device)is becoming quite popular in many educational prototypes since students feel moreconfident with their personal smartphones or tablets to carry out some learning activities. On the otherhand, these strategies permit teachers to automate certain tasks of the learning-teaching process,such as the students' assessment, the design of electronic contents and the virtual management ofstudents and subjects. As a consequence, we have developed the virtual environment AIM-MobileLearning Platform, which consists of two software applications, one for teachers and another forstudents. On the one hand, the virtual environment seeks for improving the autonomy of students toacquire the required skills, promoting their motivation, attention and participation inside class. On theother hand, it allows teachers to speed up and to automate the continuous evaluation process ofstudents and the design of interactive contents. Besides, the learning platform was developed topromote a real time feedback and interactivity inside class to enhance the learning and teachingquality.The first experimental prototype was applied in Telecom Degrees, although its implementation inmultidisciplinary scenarios and different educational contexts can be direct. In fact, the learningenvironment has been designed so that teachers do not require a deep knowledge in informatics.Therefore, in this paper we describe the experiment carried out in a set of subjects of different HigherEducation disciplines that belong to the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Industrial Technology,as well as the results and the comparison among them. The study case was focused on evaluatingstudents and following the progress of the class during the semester. Therefore, teachers launchedreal time questions during classes and students had to answer them in a few minutes using thestudent application. Once students answered them, the teacher application collected and processedevery data so that everybody could visualize the statistics and the graph with every response.Therefore, students were instantaneously conscious of their mistakes and teachers were able to followthe mean progress of the class and to detect the weakest points of the teaching-learning process. Asa consequence, it was generated a real time and useful feedback in class among teachers andstudents.The results of the study have shown that the learning environment made classes more dynamic andmotivating, increasing the responsibility, attention and participation of students. Furthermore, studentsof every degree pointed out that it encouraged a real time interaction with teachers inside classleading to achieve a constant feedback that permits students to immediately know their level ofsuccess and mistakes. On the other hand, there were more differences between disciplines regardingthe acquired TIC skills, since students of Education felt a higher development of their TIC skills incomparison with Engineering students, probably because engineering students are more used totechnology. Finally, students did not perceive great disadvantages with the experience because theyrecognized high interest and motivation and they thought that the use of personal smartphones insideclassroom did not distract them.