LEARNING PERCEPTIONS IN TRADITIONAL AND VIRTUAL CONTEXTS. STUDENT S POSITIONS AT THE UNIVERSITY

Abstract

At present, knowledge is constantly produced and renewed. Therefore, a few years of formation are no longer enough to carve out a career. Nowadays, we must have an attitude towards permanent learning, besides being alert to the information that circulates through different channels. Bearing in mind these characteristics of the contemporary world, and thinking specifically about the formation at university level, it seems nonsensical to limit the transmition of knowledge to a close body. It would be much more productive to teach students how to look for information, grow conscience on the importance of permanent updating and suggest learnings in different contexts and conditions from the familiar ones. Following this line, since 2004 some changes have been introduced in two courses belonging to the course of studies on Psicopedagogy at Universidad Nacional de Río Cuarto. Those changes refer to the inclusion of a virtual instance, in addition to the traditional classes, implemented by means of use of e-mail and Internet. In this paper, the experiencies and perceptions on the learning proposal informed by students belonging to two groups in these courses are being compared. One of the groups (of 70 students) attended the subjects in 1999, when the virtual instance was not implemented yet; the other group (of 105 students) attended them in 2004, taking part both in virtual and traditional courses. Data were collected through a questionnaire to both groups of students in order to investigate their perceptions on the classes and their personal experiences on them. The results show significant differences between the two groups in relation to the quality of their experiences. Those ones who attended the course in 2004 -when it was dictated with traditional and virtual instances- informed more positive perceptions than those who attended the course in 1999 -when it was just dictated in traditional modality. The findings seem to support and give sense to the idea of suggesting new ways to teach and to learn.