Actividades que promueven la transferencia de los aprendizajes: una revisión de la literatura

Un objetivo esencial de la educación formal es fomentar la transferencia de los aprendizajes, definida como la aplicación de un conocimiento aprendido en un contexto particular a una situación distinta. Sin embargo, con frecuencia los estudiantes no alcanzan a aplicar lo aprendido en el aula a situaciones de la vida cotidiana. Aunque existe un amplio consenso sobre la relevancia de la transferenciacomo refleja su peso en las evaluaciones PISA, nuestro conocimiento científico sobre este fenómeno es aún escaso. De hecho, gran parte de las investigaciones empíricas que comparan la efectividad de diversos métodos instructivos evalúan el aprendizaje de los alumnos con tareas que requieren que estos recuperen parte de los conocimientos enseñados en escenarios muy similares a los trabajados en el aula. En otras palabras, las medidas de aprendizaje utilizadas no evalúan la efectividad de los métodos instructivos en el fomento de la transferencia de los aprendizajes. Frente a esta tendencia, en la última década se han llevado a cabo investigaciones pioneras que persiguen estudiar qué pueden hacer los profesores para fomentar la transferencia de los aprendizajes. El presente artículo sintetiza los resultados de dichas investigaciones y se centra en aquellas llevadas a cabo con estudiantes de Educación Secundaria y universitarios. Para ello, primero se discute el origen de las dificultades de los estudiantes para transferir los aprendizajes. A continuación, se describen los resultados sobre la efectividad de los distintos métodos instructivos a la hora de fomentar la transferencia de aprendizajes. Los resultados cuestionan la eficacia de diversos métodos de instrucción tradicionalescomo la clase expositiva o la elaboración de resúmenes a la hora de promover la transferencia e indican que métodos más innovadores son necesarios para cumplir este objetivo. Para concluir, se discuten posibles líneas de trabajo futuro para el estudio de la transferencia del aprendizaje

Incivility in online news and Twitter: effects on attitudes toward scientific topics when reading in a second language

Due to the participatory nature of Web 2.0, polite communication on social media and news sites can stand side by side with uncivil comments. Research on online incivility has been conducted with users reading in their mother tongues (L1), while the potential effects of incivility in a second language (L2) have been largely under- explored. This paper analyzes the effects of uncivil comments written in an L2 on attitudes around emerging technologies. Accordingly, study 1 replicates and extends a previous experiment on the effects of incivility to online news on risk perceptions of nanotechnology (Anderson et al., 2014), by adding an ‘L2 condition’ (uncivil comments written in an L2). Then, study 2 analyzes the effect of incivility on four fictitious Twitter debates around different scientific issues, varying language (L1 or L2), and civility. Results from both studies show that participants are more likely to endorse claims written in a civil rather than uncivil manner, but only in the L1. The results contribute to understanding how online communication is affected by reading in an L2

¿Cómo navegan los adolescentes en Wikipedia para contestar preguntas?

In one experiment, we explored how high school students use hyperlink relevance cues while they navigate to answer questions from hypertexts. Current evidence has shown that students may navigate by either performing a deep semantic analysis of the relationship between the question and the existing hyperlinks, or by matching words in the question to words in the hyperlink labels. We focused on how students combine both cues during navigation, and how comprehension skills relate to the use of such cues. Our study revealed that 14 year old students (N = 53) selected hyperlinks by relying to a similar degree on both word matching and semantic overlap. Furthermore, when there was a conflict between an irrelevant link cued via word matching and a relevant link only cued through semantic overlap, students\u27 comprehension skills facilitated their initial selection of an informative relevant link. To conclude, we discuss the implications of these results for current models of hypertext navigation. (DIPF/Orig.

Using Internet videos to learn about controversies: Evaluation and integration of multiple and multimodal documents by primary school students

In many Internet videos authors appear in front of the camera to present their particular view on a topic. Given the high consumption rate of Internet videos by teenagers, we explored the pros and cons of using these videos to learn about complex topics, compared to learning from textual web pages. Specifically, we studied how 207 primary school students (grades 4–6) evaluated and integrated multiple and multimodal web pages (text or video) while learning about the pros and cons of bottled water. Results showed no major role of modality in students' source memory, as measured by citations in their responses to an integration question and their memory for sources. Nevertheless, modality exerted a strong influence on students' beliefs about the topic because, after the study period, they defended the views described in the videos more than those presented in texts. Finally, modality tended to influence students’ integration, with participants who learned from two textual webpages including almost twice as many inferences in their responses as those who learned from two videos. We discuss the results in light of current theories of evaluation and integration of multimodal information and (shallow) digital reading, and we elaborate on the pros and cons of using Internet videos in Primary School

¿Cómo enseñamos la Psicología de la Educación a los futuros maestros?

Este artículo persigue responder la siguiente pregunta: ¿Podemos enseñar Psicología de la Educación a futuros maestros tal y como lo hacemos a futuros psicólogos? En primer lugar, el análisis de las características distintivas del Grado de Maestro en Educación Infantil o Primaria nos lleva a identificar tres grandes retos para la enseñanza de Psicología de la Educación a futuros maestros: existencia de visiones epistemológicas alternativas a la Psicología científica, así como de un alto riesgo de descontextualización y de enciclopedización de la asignatura. La conclusión es obvia: necesitamos adaptar la asignatura de Psicología de la Educación para enseñarla a futuros maestros. En la segunda parte del artículo se articula una propuesta para realizar dicha adaptación, centrada fundamentalmente en el fomento de la Práctica Basada en la Evidencia, así como en la transferencia de conocimientos. Finalmente, se discuten posibles limitaciones de nuestra propuesta.This article seeks to answer the following question: Can we teach Educational Psychology to future teachers as we do to future psychologists? Firstly, the analysis of the distinctive characteristics of the Bachelor's Degree in Early Childhood Education or Primary Education leads us to identify three major challenges for the teaching of Educational Psychology to future teachers: the existence of alternative epistemologies to the empirical view adopted by modern Psychology, as well as a high risk of decontextualisation and encyclopaedisation of the subject. The conclusion is obvious: we need to adapt the subject of Educational Psychology in order to teach it to future teachers. The second part of the article articulates a proposal for such an adaptation, focusing primarily on the promotion of Evidence-Based Practice, as well as on knowledge transfer. Finally, possible limitations of our proposal are discussed

Inhibitory Control for Emotional and Neutral Scenes in Competition: An Eye-Tracking Study in Bipolar Disorder

This study examined the inhibitory control of attention to social scenes in manic, depressive, and euthymic episodes of bipolar disorder (BD). Two scenes were simultaneously presented (happy/threatening/neutral [target] versus control). Participants were asked either to look at the emotional pictures (i.e., attend-to-emotional block) or to avoid looking at the emotional pictures (i.e., attend-to-neutral block) while their eye movements were recorded. The initial orienting (latency and percentage of first fixation) and subsequent attentional engagement (gaze duration) were computed. Manic patients showed a higher percentage of initial fixations on happy scenes than on the other scenes, regardless of the instructions. However, in the attend-to-neutral block, their gaze durations were longest for threatening scenes. Inhibitory control was not modulated by the scene's emotional salience in the other groups. Thus, manic patients had difficulties voluntarily ignoring emotional information – this was characterized by a happy-related bias during initial orienting, but a threat-related bias during attentional engagement.This study was funded by Grants PSI2014-53444-P from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness; 43-CONTROL-DES-PEREAGARCIA- 2015-A from VLC-BIOMED (University of Valencia and University and Polytechnic Hospital La Fe, Spain) and CM14/00012 “Rio Hortega” from the Instituto Carlos III (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness)

How students with intellectual disabilities evaluate recommendations from internet forums

Social networks enable people with intellectual disabilities (ID) to participate actively in society and to promote their self-determination. However, concerns have been raised regarding the potential limitations of people with ID to deal with untrustworthy information sources on the Internet. In an experiment, we assessed how adult students with ID evaluated recommendations in Internet forums authored by either self-reported experts or by users under pseudonyms who supported their claim either with documentary sources or their personal experience. We compared the performances of students with ID to that of students of similar ages but higher educational levels (chronological age-matched control group) and to younger students with similar verbal mental age (verbal mental age-matched control group). Participants were asked to evaluate to what extent a fictitious user should follow particular recommendations given in a forum and to justify their evaluations by writing a message to the fictitious user. Students with ID, as opposed to the two control groups, recommended the forum advice to a higher extent regardless of authorship and evidence used, and they included in their messages to the fictitious user a higher number of opinions and information sources not present in the forum without linking them to the actual discussion. The pattern of results suggested that students with ID have a limited ability to evaluate recommendations in forums and that they do not necessarily present a delay in the development of these abilities, but rather an atypical development. Finally, we discussed the potential implications for teaching digital literacy to students with ID.This research was funded by a grant from the Spanish Secretaría General de Universidades (EDU2014-59422)

Location of navigation menus in websites: an experimental study with Arabic users

Published online: 31 October 2015While Arabic users represent by far the fastest growing language population on the Internet, research about how the peculiarities of Arabic language may shape users’ web interactions is still scarce. The preferences of Arabic users for menu location in websites have been studied. Two competing arguments have been proposed regarding the best location of menus in websites: conventional design (navigation menu should be placed on that side where users expect it based on previous experience) and reading direction (navigation menu should be placed on that side where readers are used to start off reading, so that the navigation menu is likely to be attended first). In an experiment, twenty-five participants with Arabic as mother language (who also spoke English) were briefly presented with screenshots from websites presented in Arabic or English and with menus located either on the left or the right, and rated their perceived visual appeal, usability, and trustworthiness. Results showed that participants judged the Arabic websites more positive when menus were located in the right- rather than in the left-hand side. In contrast, no differences for menu location were observed for English websites. These results are discussed in light of the conventional design and reading direction hypothesis and with regard to their implications for the design of Arabic websites.This research was partially funded by a Grant from the Spanish Secretaría General de Universidades (EDU2014-59422) to the first author

Using eye-tracking to assess sourcing during multiple document reading: A critical analysis

During the last 15 years, there have been some efforts to extend the use of eye - tracking to researching reading in complex contexts, such as the reading of multiple documents. The research community involved in this extension has been interested in higher - order comprehensio n processes occurring in complex reading contexts, such as sourcing, defined as the processes of attending to, representing, evaluating, and using available or accessible information about the sources of textual content. In this article, we argue that exte nding eye - tracking research to investigate more complex reading contexts has been made without critically reflecting on its validity in those contexts . Specifically, because eye - tracking captures automatic as well as conscious processes, it is currently an open question how consistently eye - tracking captures the strategic sourcing processes that take place during multiple document reading, in particular when using real documents that include salient source information that may attract bottom - up fixations. I n contrast, subjective methods , such as interviews , mainly target conscious processes, and may th erefore be a more valid and generalizable measure of strategic sourcing activities . W e compared sourcing indicators based on eye - tracking measures to sourcing indicated by a post - reading interview. Results suggest ed that curren t eye - tracking indices of sourcin g are not universally valid measures, and that simpler methods, such as asking readers whether they paid attention to source information , may be more suite d to assess strategic sourcing during multiple document reading

Processing and learning from multiple sources: a comparative case study of students with dyslexia working in a multiple source multimedia context

This study investigated how four 10th-grade students with dyslexia processed and integrated information across web pages and representations when learning in a multiple source multimedia context. Eye movement data showed that participants' processing of the materials varied with respect to their initial exploration of the web pages, their overall processing time, and the linearity of their processing patterns, with post-learning interviews indicating the deliberate, strategic considerations underlying each participant's processing pattern. Eye movement data in terms of fixation duration and percentage of regressions also corroborated the findings of formal, diagnostic assessments. Finally, it was found that participants differed with respect to how much factual information they learned from working with the materials and how well they were able to integrate information across the web pages and representations, with results suggesting particular problems with learning factual information and, at the same time,constructing a coherent mental representation of the issue, as well as with drawing on textual information in the integration process. This study brings together two research areas that essentially have been kept apart in theory and research, that is, dyslexia and multimedia learning, and it provides unique information about the role of individual differences in multiple source multimedia contexts