Más allá de la tecnología: análisis de los entornos de aprendizaje personales y grupales de estudiantes en una asignatura universitaria

Abstract

In this paper we present the results of a naturalistic study carried out with higher education students which describes their learning environments when working on academic tasks in groups and individually. In this study we want to analyse how they organize their learning activities and knowledge processes (reading, reflecting and sharing) and how these learning processes are integrated into their Personal Learning Environments (PLE). In order to achieve that, students had to reflect about the basic ‘components’ that make up their learning process: reading (using not only by text but also multimedia), doing/reflecting (creating cognitive artefacts) and sharing (discussing, showing, and offering and receiving feedback from and to a community of reference). Students formed relationships between those components and any technological tools they used and created mind maps to represent their PLEs. The main objective is to try to understand how PLEs are organized and how they are perceived by learners, not from a technological perspective but from a learning perspective. The main results confirm the strong nature of PLEs as a pedagogical approach with a strong technological base. In addition, those results suggest a close relationship between students’ beliefs and expectations regarding academic tasks as well as the importance they give to each component in their learning process.

En este artículo se presentan los resultados de un estudio en el que se pretende analizar los componentes que estructuran y configuran los Entornos Personales de Aprendizaje (PLE) de un grupo limitado de estudiantes en el marco de la enseñanza universitaria. Se trata de un estudio de caso que pretende ir más allá de la mera descripción tecnológica del PLE e intentar conocer cómo las actividades y procesos que se ponen en marcha en una tarea académica universitaria tienen relación —o no— con los componentes del PLE (leer, hacer/reflexionar y compartir) y si además estas actividades se apoyan o no en tecnologías telemáticas. Los resultados obtenidos reafirman la naturaleza del PLE como enfoque pedagógico con una fuerte base tecnológica y además sugieren una estrecha relación entre las creencias y expectativas de los estudiantes respecto de las tareas académicas y la importancia que dan a cada componente en su proceso de aprendizaje.