Evaluación de la presencia del concepto ‘Entorno Personal de Aprendizaje’ en los dominios web de las instituciones de Educación Superior en España: un estudio de menciones web

The concept of 'Personal Learning Environment' (PLE) has generated considerable levels of attention among researchers and practitioners concerned with technology -mediated education. By introducing students and educators to this concept, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) may enable their communities to make better informed decisions on the resources they use in their day-to-day academic practice. Moreover, it may help them develop autonomy as self-regulated learners and enhance their agency in lifelong learning. This article is part of a study looking at the presence of that concept across the web domains of universities and other HEIs in Spain, a country that stands out due to the amount of research on PLEs it has produced. The article presents the findings of the first phase of the study and concludes that the concept is relatively well established in the Spanish HE arena. Nevertheless, the presence of the term is unevenly distributed across the sector, as it is higher among public universities and distance education institutions.El concepto de ‘Entorno Personal de Aprendizaje’ ha generado niveles atención considerables en el ámbito de la tecnología educativa. Familiarizar a estudiantes y docentes con dicho concepto es algo que puede ayudar a las instituciones de educación superior a que sus comunidades tomen decisiones mejor informadas en cuanto los recursos que emplean para el desarrollo de su actividad académica. Asimismo, es algo que puede ayudar a los estudiantes a mejorar su autonomía para la autorregulación de sus procesos de aprendizaje y mejorar su agencia para el aprendizaje a lo largo de la vida. Este artículo forma parte de un estudio que analiza la presencia de dicho concepto en los dominios web de universidades y otras instituciones de educación superior en España, un país que ha destacado por la cantidad de investigación que ha generado en torno a esta temática. El artículo presenta los resultados de la primera fase del estudio y concluye que el concepto de entorno personal de aprendizaje está establecido en el sistema de educación superior español. No obstante, la presencia del término está distribuida de manera irregular en el sector, ya que ha tenido mayor alcance entre universidades públicas e instituciones dedicadas a la educación a distancia.21 página

Youth-culture or student-culture? The internet use intensity divide among university students and the consequences for academic performance

The effects of Internet use on the academic performance of university students is usually analyzed from a deterministic perspective that gives this technology an immanently positive or negative role. In this paper we consider the problem from an alternative point of view. We analyze the actual Internet uses the students engage in and the differences in these according to the students’ characteristics. We aim to explain when spending more time on the Internet has a positive and a negative effect on academic performance and explain why usually a high usage time of internet is correlated with a lower academic achievement

Capturing schools’ digital capacity: Psychometric analyses of the SELFIE self-reflection tool

Results from self-reflection tools for schools’ digital capacity can lead to evidence-based decisions within the school community and/or the development of an action plan for a better integration of digital technologies. Thus, it is important that the information derived from self-reflection tools is complete, accurate, and relevant. However, usually self-reflection tools do not show evidence of the quality of the information provided. In this paper, we focus on SELFIE, a new, comprehensive, and customisable self-reflection tool for schools’ digital capacity, and we analyse the quality of the information that it provides. In particular, we look at discrimination and difficulty item parameters (using item response theory), we analyse the reliability (using Cronbach’s alpha and Omega) and the construct validity (using confirmatory factor analysis) of its core items. We find support for the tool quality and conclude that schools using SELFIE are provided with accurate information on their digital capacity. Additionally, we discuss ideas for further improving the tool and future research work. The innovative design of the SELFIE tool and the psychometric analyses of its core items are a novelty in the field of schools’ digital capacity and can provide insights for the development of self-reflection tools for school communities

Influence of employer support for professional development on MOOCs enrolment and completion: Results from a cross-course survey

Although the potential of open education and MOOCs for professional development is usually recognized, it has not yet been explored extensively. How far employers support non-formal learning is still an open question. This paper presents the findings of a survey-based study which focuses on the influence of employer support for (general) professional development on employees’ use of MOOCs. Findings show that employers are usually unaware that their employees are participating in MOOCs. In addition, employer support for general professional development is positively associated with employees completing MOOCs and obtaining certificates for them. However, the relationship between employer support and MOOC enrollment is less clear: workers who have more support from their employers tend to enroll in either a low or a high number of MOOCs. Finally, the promotion of a minimum of ICT skills by employers is shown to be an effective way of encouraging employee participation in the open education ecosystem.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Can overclaiming technique improve self-assessment tools for digital competence? The case of DigCompSat

Digital competence is crucial for living, working and participating in current societies. Despite its huge importance, objective measurement tools for it are scarce due to its developmental difficulty. Self-assessment of digital competence seems a promising proxy of objective tests, and it additionally offers the possibility for surveying otherwise unmeasurable constructs such as attitudes and beliefs. However, self-assessment tools are burdened with validity problems, most notably response biases such as overly positive descriptions, overclaiming or careless and insufficient effort responding. In this paper, we investigate how these problems can be mitigated by using the overclaiming technique, a technique that identifies and corrects the bias variance in self-assessments. Our main result was that the use of the overclaiming technique can lead to higher reliability and validity of digital competence self-assessment tools, especially for short scales. Moreover, it allows for correcting additional spurious variance in comparison with careless responding indexes, which allows the use of both these techniques in parallel to increase the quality of data. Our results are important in providing advances in enhanced information on digital competence that can result in better lifelong learning decisions when used at the individual level and in better policy-making decisions when used at the aggregate level

Teacher collaboration and students’ digital competence - evidence from the SELFIE tool

This paper explores the relationship between students’ digital competence acquisition, teaching practices, and teacher professional learning activities. We analysed insights provided by 59,452 teachers through SELFIE, an online self-reflection tool for schools’ digital capacity. Using ordinary least squares regressions with school fixed effects, we focus on students’ digital competence and find that the use of digital technologies in cross-curricular projects is the teaching practice most related to the acquisition of students’ digital competence. On the other hand, we also find that teachers’ participation in teacher networks is highly correlated with the implementation of cross-curricular projects with digital technologies. The results further suggest that the use of digital technologies for teacher collaboration (in professional learning activities and in implementing cross-curricular projects) can have great potential and importance in the digital age, both for teachers and learners

Setting-up a European Cross-Provider Data Collection on Open Online Courses

While MOOCS have emerged as a new form of open online education around the world, research is still lagging behind to come up with a sound theoretical basis that can cover the impact of socio- economic background variables, ICT competences, prior experiences and lifelong learning profile, variance in intentions, environmental influences, outcome expectations, learning experience, and economic return on taking and completing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The potential diversity of participants of MOOCs has been taken as a starting point to develop a theoretical model and survey instrument with the goal to establish a large-scale, cross-provider data collection of participants of (European) MOOCs. This article provides an overview of the theoretical model, the start-phase of the project, and reflects on first experiences with the cross- provider data collection.This work has been partially funded by a tender (JRC/SVQ/2013/J.3/0035/NC) of the European Commission’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS)

How are Higher Education Institutions Dealing with Openness? A Survey of Practices, Beliefs, and Strategies in Five European Countries

Open Education is on the agenda of half of the surveyed Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. For the other half of HEIs, Open Education does not seem to be an issue, at least at the time of the data collection of the survey (spring 2015). This report presents results of a representative a survey of Higher Education institutions in five European countries (France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom) to enquire about their Open Education (OE) practices, beliefs and strategies (e.g MOOCs). It aims to provide evidence for the further development of OE to support the supports the Opening Up Communication (European Commission, 2013) and the renewed priority on Open Education, enabled by digital technologies, of ET2020JRC.J.3-Information Societ

Mismatch between Demand and Supply among higher education graduates in the EU

The misalignment between demand and supply contributes to the labour market problems experienced by many recent graduates in Europe. Not only does the growth in the number of recent university graduates differ from the growth in job vacancies potentially available for them, but also a large number of individuals end up completing their tertiary degree in subjects for which there is little demand or for which there is an excess of supply relative to demand. In an attempt to investigate whether the EU is expected to generate the appropriate number and type of graduates, this study compares projections on forecasted graduate labour market development tendencies made by Cedefop between 2016 and 2030 with estimated trends in the supply of tertiary graduates during the same period. The analysis predicts that, while a rough balance between graduate demand and supply is likely to emerge at aggregate level, there will be a small surplus of graduates in the fields of ICT and a more relevant one in Science and Engineering. Results, however, significantly differ across individual EU Member States.JRC.B.4-Human Capital and Employmen