Efectos del diseño de la tienda virtual en el comportamiento de compra: tipificación del consumidor online

Cuando una empresa se decide a realizar una iniciativa comercial en Internet, al igual que en el mundo físico, es necesario definir un diseño adecuado del sitio web que se ajuste a su idea de negocio y a su público objetivo. El presente trabajo trata de analizar como influye el diseño del establecimiento virtual en el desarrollo de la gestión comercial, incidiendo en los siguientes aspectos: diseño gráfico, usabilidad y accesibilidad. A partir de este análisis, se estudian los distintos grupos de consumidores con comportamientos homogéneos y se posicionan en función de sus actitudes. El análisis también permite definir la calidad del servicio prestado por este tipo de establecimientos, así como las principales dimensiones en que se despliega. En las conclusiones se citan aspectos en los que el gestor de una tienda online debe incidir para mejorar la calidad de su servicio.

Using a blog to create and support a Community of Inquiry in Secondary Education

Understanding how blogs can support collaborative learning is a vital concern for researchers and teachers. This paper explores how blogs may be used to support Secondary Education students’ collaborative interaction and how such an interaction process can promote the creation of a Community of Inquiry to enhance critical thinking and meaningful learning. We designed, implemented and evaluated a science case-based project in which fifteen secondary students participated. Students worked in the science blogging project during 4 months. We asked students to be collaboratively engaged in purposeful critical discourse and reflection in their blogs in order to solve collectively science challenges and construct meaning about topics related to Astronomy and Space Sciences. Through student comments posted in the blog, our findings showed that the blog environment afforded the construction of a Community of Inquiry and therefore the creation of an effective online collaborative learning community. In student blog comments, the three presences for collaborative learning took place: cognitive, social, and teaching presence. Moreover, our research found a positive correlation among the three presences –cognitive, social and teaching– of the Community of Inquiry model with the level of learning obtained by the students. We discuss a series of issues that instructors should consider when blogs are incorporated into teaching and learning. We claim that embedded scaffolds to help students to argue and reason their comments in the blog are required to foster blog-supported collaborative learning.

Scaffolding through the network: analysing the promotion of improved online scaffolds among university students

This article explores how to enrich scaffolding processes among university students using specific Computer Supported Collaborative Learning –CSCL- software. A longitudinal case study was designed, in which eighteen students participated in a twelve-month learning project. During this period the students followed an instructional process, using the CSCL software to support and improve the students’ interaction processes, in particular the processes of giving and receiving assistance. Our research analyzed the evolution of the quality of the students’ interaction processes and the students’ learning results. The effects of the students’ participation in the CSCL environment have been described in terms of their development of affective, cognitive and metacognitive learning processes. Our results showed that the specific activities that students performed while working with the CSCL system triggered specific learning processes, which had a positive incidence on their learning results.

Teaching how to learn with a wiki in Primary Education: what classroom interaction can tell us

Understanding how wikis are used to support collaborative learning is an important concern for researchers and teachers. Adopting a discourse analytic approach, this paper attempts to understand the teaching processes when a wiki is embedded in a science project in primary education to foster collaborative learning. Through studying interaction between the teacher and students, our findings identify ways in which the teacher prompts collaborative learning but also shed light on the difficulties for the teacher in supporting student collective collaboration. It is argued that technological wiki features supporting collaborative learning can only be realized if teacher talk and pedagogy are aligned with the characteristics of wiki collaborative work: the freedom of students to organize and participate by themselves, creating dialogic space and promoting student participation. We argue that a dialogic approach for examining interaction can be used to help to design a more effective pedagogic approach in the use of wikis in education, to shift into Web 2.0 learning paradigm and to equip learners with the competences they need to participate in knowledge co-construction.

Wiki-supported collaborative learning in primary education. How a dialogic space is created for thinking together

This paper explores how wikis may be used to support primary education students’ collaborative interaction and how such an interaction process can be characterised. The overall aim of this study is to analyse the collaborative processes of students working together in a wiki environment, in order to see how primary students can actively create a shared context for learning in the wiki. Educational literature has already reported that wikis may support collaborative knowledge-construction processes, but in our study we claim that a dialogic perspective is needed to accomplish this. Students must develop an intersubjective orientation towards each others’ perspectives, to co-construct knowledge about a topic. For this purpose, our project utilised a ‘Thinking Together’ approach to help students develop an intersubjective orientation towards one another and to support the creation of a ‘dialogic space’ to co-construct new understanding in a wiki science project. The students’ asynchronous interaction process in a primary classroom -- which led to the creation of a science text in the wiki -- was analysed and characterised, using a dialogic approach to the study of CSCL practices. Our results illustrate how the Thinking Together approach became embedded within the wiki environment and in the students’ collaborative processes. We argue that a dialogic approach for examining interaction can be used to help design more effective pedagogic approaches related to the use of wikis in education and to equip learners with the competences they need to participate in the global knowledge-construction era.

Debating as a classroom tool for adapting learning outcomes to the European higher education area

The creation of the European Higher Education Area has meant a number of significant changes to the educational structures of the university community. In particular, the new system of European credits has generated the need for innovation in the design of curricula and teaching methods. In this paper, we propose debating as a classroom tool that can help fulfill these objectives by promoting an active student role in learning. To demonstrate the potential of this tool, a classroom experiment was conducted in a bachelor’s degree course in Industrial Economics -Regulation and Competition-, involving a case study in competition policy and incorporating the techniques of a conventional debate -presentation of standpoints, turns, right to reply and summing up-. The experiment yielded gains in student attainment and positive assessments of the subject. In conclusion, the incorporation of debating activities helps students to acquire the skills, be they general or specific, required to graduate successfully in Economics.

Trabajo Final de Grado Información y Documentación de la UOC: experiencias para una mejor inserción laboral

Peer-reviewed

University teacher competences in a virtual teaching/learning environment : analysis of a teacher training experience

This paper attempts to shed light on the competencies a teacher must have inorder to teach in online university environments. We will relate a teacher trainingexperience, which was designed taking into account the methodological criteriaestablished in line with previous theoretical principles. The main objective of ouranalysis is to identify the achievements and difficulties of a specific formativeexperience, with the ultimate goal of assessing the suitability of this conceptualmethodologicalframework for the design of formative proposals aiming to contribute tothe development of teacher competencies for virtual environments.

User-Centered Design Gymkhana

The User-centered design (UCD) Gymkhana is a tool for human-computer interaction practitioners to demonstrate through a game the key user-centered design methods and how they interrelate in the design process.The target audiences are other organizational departments unfamiliar with UCD but whose work is related to the definition, cretaion, and update of a product service.

Metadata for describing learning scenarios under European Higher Education Area paradigm

In this paper we identify the requirements for creating formal descriptions of learning scenarios designed under the European HigherEducation Area paradigm, using competences and learning activities as the basic pieces of the learning process, instead of contents and learning resources, pursuing personalization. Classical arrangements of content based courses are no longer enough to describe all the richness of this new learning process, where user profiles, competences and complex hierarchical itineraries need to be properly combined. We study the intersection with the current IMS Learning Design specification and theadditional metadata required for describing such learning scenarios. This new approach involves the use of case based learning and collaborativelearning in order to acquire and develop competences, following adaptive learning paths in two structured levels.

Creating a research network for a successful e-portfolio design and implementation

The presence of e-portfolios in educational centres, companies and administrations has emergedstrongly during the last years by creating very different practices coming from different objectives and purposes. This situation has led researchers and practitioners to design and implement e-portfolios with little reference to previous knowledge of them; consequently, developments are disparate with many of the processes and dimensions used both in development and use being unnecessary complex. In order to minimize the inconveniences, unify these developmental processes and improve the resultsof implementation and use of e-portfolios, it seemed necessary to create a network of researchers, teachers and trainers coming from different universities and institutions of different kinds who are interested in the investigation and the practice of e-portfolios in Spain. Therefore, The Network on e-portfoliowas created in 2006, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and led by the UniversitatOberta de Catalunya. Besides the goals associatedwith the creation of this network and which wewanted to share with other European researchers and experts of other continents, we will also present in this paper some data concerned with the first study carried out on the use of e-portfolios in our country that shows where we are and which trends are the most important for the near future.

Online and Offline Participation at the Local level: A Quantitative Analysis of the Catalan Municipalities

This article presents an analysis on local participatory experiences in Catalonia,both online and in-person. The analysis is based on a database set up by theauthors. The article carries out an explanatory analysis of local participatoryinitiatives (on- and offline) taking into account political variables (not usually con-sidered in this kind of analysis) and also classical socio-economic variables thatcharacterize municipalities. Hence, we add a quantitative analysis to the numerouscase studies on local e-participation experiences. We have chosen Catalonia becauseit is one of the European regions with more initiatives and a considerable localgovernment support for citizen participation initiatives since the 1980s. Thearticle offers a characterization of these experiences and an explanatory analysis,considering: (i) the institutional context in which these experiences are embedded,(ii) the citizen participation processes and mechanisms online and (iii) a set ofexplanatory variables composed of the population size and the province to whichthe municipality belongs, the political tendency of the mayor, the electoral absten-tion rate, age, income, level of education, broadband connection and users of theInternet in the municipality. The model that we present is explanatory for munici-palities with more than 20,000 inhabitants but it is not for fewer than 20,000inhabitants. Actually, the majority of these latter municipalities have not developedany participatory activities. Among all the variables, population size is the mostinfluential variable and affects the influence of other variables, such as the politicalparty of the mayor, the local abstention rate and the province.

Juego online de preguntas y respuestas

Proyecto que incluye memoria, código fuente y binario (war desplegable en servidor de aplicaciones Java) del proyecto de "Juego online de preguntas y respuestas" creado como videojuego educativo de PFC para Ingeniería de Informática.

The FaceUOC Project : An Open Social Learning experience by the Open University of Catalonia

The possibilities and expansion of the use of Web 2.0 has opened up a world of possibilities in online learning. In spite of the integration of these tools in education major changes are required in the educational design of instructional processes.This paper presents an educational experience conducted by the Open University of Catalonia using the social network Facebook for the purpose of testing a learning model that uses a participation and collaboration methodology among users based on the use of open educational resources.- The aim of the experience is to test an Open Social Learning (OSL) model, understood to be a virtual learning environment open to the Internet community, based on the use of open resources and on a methodology focused on the participation and collaboration of users in the construction of knowledge.- The topic chosen for this experience in Facebook was 2.0 Journeys: online tools and resources. The objective of this 5 weeks course was to provide students with resources for managing the various textual, photographic, audiovisual and multimedia materials resulting from a journey.- The most important changes in the design and development of a course based on OSL are the role of the teacher, the role of the student, the type of content and the methodology:- The teacher mixes with the participants, guiding them and offering the benefit of his/her experience and knowledge.- Students learn through their participation and collaboration with a mixed group of users.- The content is open and editable under different types of license that specify the level of accessibility.- The methodology of the course was based on the creation of a learning community able to self-manage its learning process. For this a facilitator was needed and also a central activity was established for people to participate and contribute in the community.- We used an ethnographic methodology and also questionnaires to students in order to acquire results regarding the quality of this type of learning experience.- Some of the data obtained raised questions to consider for future designs of educational situations based on OSL:- Difficulties in breaking the facilitator-centred structure- Change in the time required to adapt to the system and to achieve the objectives- Lack of commitment with free courses- The trend to return to traditional ways of learning- Accreditation- This experience has taught all of us that education can happen any time and in any place but not in any way.

Metacognitive presence in asynchronous online learning environments : self, mutual and hetero-regulation

Peer-reviewed