IETC - April 26-28, 2010 Istanbul, TURKEY

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1 ATTITUDES AND COMPETENCES IN ICT AT THE UNIVERSITY CASES: MEXICO, UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE CHIHUAHUA, UNIVERSIDAD VERACRUZANA AND SPAIN, UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA. Ana M. Arras Vota Facultad de Ciencias Agrotecnológicas, Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua México Carlos A. TORRES-GASTELÚ Facultad de Administración, Universidad Veracruzana México Ana García-Valcárcel Muñoz-Repiso Facultad de Educación, Universidad de Salamanca - España Abstract Postmodernity is signed by earth s unification through information and communication technologies (ICT). Through ICT virtual spaces are created, in those humans generate knowledge, interact and relate in ways that before were unimaginable; therefore the need to study ways in which competence in the use of ICT are acquired, as well as the scenarios in educative environments, attitudes and responses given by diverse social actors who enter in contact with new modalities in academic formation at the university. The purpose of this study that incorporates a research in different universities is to analyze the way in which those processes are done in university s sphere at Salamanca, in Spain, as well as the University Autónoma of Chihuahua and Veracruzana in Mexico. For this purpose this paper begins with theoretical foundation as a common frame to interpret the outcome of the study, results in terms of attitudes, competence and innovation in relation to ICT. Key words: Attitudes, competence, and Information and Communication Technologies, ICT competence Introduction Technologic revolution has signed the last decade of the XX century and the first one in the XXI century, has generated new paradigms 1 in all sectors, without doubt, the use of technology has and still is creating new forms in which educative practice is done, in that sense Tezanos (apud Escudero 2004) comments that educative technology has evolved in a meaningful way in recent years, its advance is a clear reflection of the meaning that communication and information technology has acquired in the past century, as a matter of fact, it can be called the third great transformation generated, until now, by humanity, after the agriculture and industrial ones. A turn in the course of history has been made in the ways of production, living and knowledge acquisition for human kind, it can be said that a model or a technological pattern, a new way of doing things, therefore the construction of a new paradigm accepted by global society. González (apud Arras y Valencia, 2008) considers that t this revolution has promoted a new society marked by global changes, innovational technologies and information, influencing economy, politics, competitive aspects, work market, education strategies, new forms of recreation and interaction between people, etcetera. All this implies that technology and paradigm change are not given in a void, by themselves, according to Cabero (2004), they are given in the womb of society, in a specific ic social context, in which ICT become a media that molds learning construction and compel redesign of organizational structures and create variants in education s valuation, as well as the responsibility of the teacher in guiding the student in acquiring technological competences, which implies that the teacher possesses the needed technological competences. In that sense the effort of UNESCO (2008), in setting up norms of competences in ICT for teachers, is understandable, and was given at the conference Moving Young Minds, and set three approaches to improve the quality of education, reduce poverty and inequity, advance the standards of living, and prepare a country s citizens for the challenges of the 21st century. Increasing the technological uptake of the workforce by incorporating technology skills in the curriculum or the technology literacy approach. ach Increasing the ability of the workforce to use knowledge to add value to economic output by applying it to solve complex, realworld problems or the knowledge e deepening approach. Increasing the ability of the workforce to innovate and produce new knowledge and of citizens to benefit from this new knowledge or the knowledge creation approach. Therefore, re, the competencies that are to be developed in respect to ICT are equivalent to a technological alphabetization, because they are connected cted not only with educative development, but with the social and productive one, and will also be factor that will make the difference in the insertion in society, in the language of the world s interchange, and will generate the development of communities. This approach implies the development of competencies in ICT that emerge as paradigms in education, in that sense it is said that a competent person is one who does very well what is expected, as Ibarra (apud Estévez et al, 2003; p. 5) expresses, a competence is a group of abilities, knowledge and attitudes that are needed to optimal performing in an occupation, or a productive function. When relating this concept to the use of ICT, it can be said that they are a group of abilities, knowledge and attitudes applied to the use of information and communication mun systems, including the equipment that the activity implies, and in according with the ICT Skills, (apud. Godoy, 2006), to the capability of making Web designs, presentations, data bases, programs to elaborate graphics, calculus pages, data bases, Web, e mail, Chat applications and text processors. Such competencies are to be attained, in some way in the formal environment of education, therefore one must refer the concept of educative technology that is conceived by Ramírez (1999; p. 425) as a model of organization integrated by persons meanings and conceptualizations through the use of diverse technological media (TV, multimedia, printed documents and computing nets as well as teleconferences) that facilitate the cooperative elaboration, implantation and evaluation of environments and educative open and flexible programs that fulfill the needs of the existing dynamics to the interior of the community and of an emerging global society. All this require a positive attitude from all social actors involved in this process, this means aspects as thoughts and meaning, by perceiving the value of technology use, etcetera. This according to García-Valcárcel (2009, 55) represents a challenge because university teaching has to deal with teachers proposals that 1 Paradigm from Kuhn s perspective (2006, pp ), is a model or an accepted pattern that reaches its position because it succeeds in solving problems that the scientific group considers urgent. Copyright 145

2 allow to improve information access and knowledge, as well as the development of collaborative actions and critical understanding of the advantage of telematic nets, because their use facilitates interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as professional development of interuniversity s work group. According to this development education, with the use of technologies, according to Arras and Valencia (2008), has made a turn incorporating a new paradigm in its processes, paradigm that goes hand with hand with postmodernity characterized by electronic unification of the earth and, with it, of a virtual space in which ubiquity can be given because of the potential of technology and the processes they generate. All this brings a danger to fall in an existential void and acquisition of light knowledge -that goes with the lack of depth with which this times are signed- and that represents a challenge to overcome for those who search that through an educative processes a profound knowledge can be attained in order for humans to have a formative process for a lifetime, recognizing themselves as subjects capable of doing and creating each moment with the consciousness of a commitment with themselves, the other, the society, and the works, and at the same time to have and allow equity of opportunities with independence of gender, circumstance or environment. Methodology To make this research, of an empirical nature and of mix character qualitative and quantitative-, the method analytical and synthetic were used, as well as the theory-deductive. This research is of an applied form, its type is descriptive and the mode is bibliographic and field research. A questionnaire and interviews were used as techniques to attain information, as well as bibliographic tools. Objective The general objective that guided this study was: To analyze the attitudes and competences in ICT in university students. Universe Students from the University of Salamanca, Veracruzana University and University Autonoma of Chihuahua. To select the sample the class which professor was using ICT as a significative mean in teaching were subjects to the study. In accordance to researcher s availability, 20 is the number of teachers and groups to be the sample of this research in each university are the students, distributed in the three universities, which integrate the sample, as is shown in table 1. Table 1. Distribution of data by university (student s sample) Frecuencia Porcentaje Chihuahua Salamanca Veracruz Total ,00 Basic characteristics of identification for the global sample are: 59,4% are females y 40,6% are males 97,1% is in a physical presence model of education; the rest semi-presence. ence. The highest percentage (81,3%) of classes that participate in the project are developed in a base number of students between 20 y 50; in 13,5% of the classes, registered ed students are less than 20; in 5,3% the number of students in class are over 50. Data from innovational experiences in ICT use in teaching-learning processes was gathered from 59 classes from the three universities. Results As levels of ICT competence in students, in this research a classification was done taking in consideration the basic, profounding and ethical ICT competences. Information referring rring each item in the questionnaire is presented in a graphic, with the other items with which they form a dimension. The students responses s were as follow, taking in consideration that blue represents the answers with value one, which means nothing, red represents a value for two which means a little, three is for enough and four for much. Graphic 1. Basic Competence in ICT ETGrap 209 Graphic 2. Application and profound competences Copyright 146

3 Graphic 3. Ethical competences As one can see, most of the percentages of the different items from the questionnaire in levels of competence in ICT, are gathered in the categories of 4 and 5, which clearly indicates that in general, students value in a positive way their own competences in relation to ICT domain, especially those related with teaching and learning processes (use of informatics resources and net work, getting information through digital tools ) and those related to attitudes (value they give to ICT as a mean of learning and collaborating, legal and responsible use of information ). The competence domains in which students recognize a greater level of capability are: Values ICT as an instrument of continuous learning. Values ICT as a mean of collaboration and social communication. Applies digital tools to get information. ion. Uses the main informatics network resources. Makes a legal and responsible e use of information through h ICT. The competence domain worst valuated (with medias less than 2.7), that could be recognized as weak points are: The use of models and simulations to explore complex themes. Group participation in Project development to produce tasks or solve problems. The rest of the competence domains present values between 2.7 and 3, which can be considered as satisfactory from the point of view of the grading criteria, and the normative one, because the average of the level of the competences is situated in 2.92, with a typical deviation of 0.46, which determines ermines that 68% of students that answered the questionnaire would be situated with values between 2.46 and 3.38, which indicates levels els of competence that can be considered adequate. It is important to remember that it is a self valuation of their levels of competence. ce. This fact demands our thinking of forming students in ICT in the process of teaching-learning, especially in competences of problem solving, group work, project development, use of models and simulation to explore complex themes, and communication through ICT. Graphic 4. Average in the dimensions of ICT Competences In graphic four, it some descriptive data are presented, such as media, typical deviation and median, from each one of the dimensions considered in the analysis of competence levels. The level of domain in competences called basic, reaches a media value of 2.9 on a scale of 4, this result cannot be considered high, and none reaches over 3.5. Therefore we want to pinpoint the fact that ICT incorporation in teaching practice at the university cannot disregard the previous task of students formation in ICT use, specially, of course, when the tools that are required increase in complexity. The levels of higher competency, according to students, are the ethical items. Copyright 147

4 Graphic 5. Attitudes toward the use of ICT This result derives from a scale of 1 to 5, ( I totally agree ) and the media value for all items is over 3.7, and the highest value is given to item 9: ICT help research for resources in academic tasks. This is what students considered the highest contribution of ICT for their learning activities. Next positive valuations of ICT are produced when the highest percentages of answer correspond to category 4 ( I agree ) and are referred to the following learning strategies: ICT Favor my learning tasks ICT help improve elaboration of academic work ICT allow me to better organize my work ICT help regulate effort in academic ademic tasks. ICT Improve possibilities to work with other mates It could be said that students value positively what ICT are giving them as a support in those learning strategies that without technologies would cost a lot in regard to effort and time consumed, such as search for documents and academic tasks presentation. The strategies they valuated less positive were: ICT allow me to develop critical thinking ICT allow me to optimize time management ICT allow me to a better cognitive organization 20 Conclusions This research started with the purpose of analyzing the attitudes and competences in ICT in university students, and in regard to attitudes it can be seen en that it shows a positive tendency of students as a collective unit, with a global value of 3.6 in a scale from 1 to 5, which means that they consider relevant the use of ICT in their learning and trust themselves in their abilities and competences to interact in ICT environments. The study also shows great areas of opportunity to university teachers in regard to focus their teaching activities in the areas of critical thinking, model simulation, project development and problem solving, because students consider this as weak areas, and technologies by themselves cannot improve learning if students are not capable of constructing knowledge, so teachers must design activities with which, through the use of ICT, students are able to travel in the world of profound learning with the motivation and commitment needed to improve this world. Bibliography Arras, A. Valencia, A. (2008). Las Tecnologías educativas, paradigma de la posmodernidad. En: Sociedad y Cultura. ( ). México, McGraw Hill/UACH. Cabero, J. (2004). Reflexiones sobre las tecnologías como instrumentos culturales. En Martínez, F. y Castaño, C. (2008). La segunda brecha digital y las mujeres. Revista Telos. [Revisado: 20/11/2009] Escudero, J. (2004). La educación, puerta de entrada o de exclusión a la sociedad del conocimiento. En Martínez, F. y Prendes M. (Coord), Nuevas tecnologías y educación (pp ). Madrid, Pearson. Estévez, E. (1999). La enseñanza basada en el uso de estrategias cognitivas. Hermosillo. Sonora. México, UNISON. García-Valcárcel, A. (2009). Herramientas tecnológicas para la mejora de la docencia universitaria. En García-Valcárcel, A. (Coord.) La incorporación de las TIC en la docencia universitaria: recursos para la formación del profesorado. Barcelona, Davinci. Pp Copyright 148

5 Godoy, C. (2006). Usos educativos de las TIC: Competencias tecnológicas y rendimiento académico de los estudiantes barineses, una perspectiva causa. En: Educere-investigación arbitrada. Kuhn, T. (2006). La estructura de las revoluciones científicas. México, FCE. Ramírez, A. (1999). Desarrollo del programa de tecnología educativa en el IPN. Memorias del XV Simposio Internacional de Computación en la Educación. [ México: SOMECE. P UNESCO (2009). Reunión I: Mejorar las competencias: Un salto cualitativo para la educación, primera reunión de la Mesa Redonda Ministerial sobre Educación en el marco de la Conferencia General de la UNESCO, 9 y 10 de octubre, [Revisado: 07/11/2009]. Copyright 149