Virtual platforms use: a useful monitoring tool

Abstract

The European Higher Education Area is motivating a substantial change in university education and is promoting the use of new Technologies of Information and Communication. The educational virtual platform Moodle is one of the most widely used worldwide and also facilitates the creation of online learning sites and provides data of monitoring platform by users. This study focuses on the extent of use of Moodle by university students, following the same groups in their first and last academic year, finding a significant relation with the marks obtained in the subjects analyzed. This relationship shows that students with lower marks have used less Moodle platform, which has been maintained until the end of the Degree. Therefore, it is suggested that records in virtual platforms could be used as an index of interest in the subjects and it is recommended that they be analyzed during the first academic year in order to detect the least motivated groups and thus be able to act.

Keywords

• Universities
• Computer assisted instruction
• Computer uses in education
• Educational technology
• Student participation