Schoology as an alternative to traditional teaching tools for university students

Resumen

The advent of online learning platforms and Web 2.0 technologies is believed to provide an autonomous learning space that attempts to improve learning through communication among students and teacher and collaborative work using the capacity of students to navigate for their own learning and developing autonomy. It is considered as learning Management system (LMS), which allows teachers and student to reinvent the way in which the technology is implemented inside the classroom. Schoology is a free online learning platform based on the cloud, a social networking learning management system. The aim of this research is to analyse if we can use Schoology TM to develop online learning through a collaborative effort between teachers and students, allowing everyone to work together to achieve better results. This platform lets students to view innovative multimedia content developed by the teacher and allows them to choose between different modalities of study: classroom, semi-presence, distance or online, to achieve more enriching and personalized learning experiences. It also provides teachers a complete set of learning management tools, both internal and external; such as: Managing existing Content, developing and implementing new content, generating and evaluating questionnaires, analyse the performance of the students, communicate with the professors and students; as well as motivate them in an effective way within an online environment. This research also wants to determine the effectiveness of using Schoology as an innovative approach as regards as enhancing the proficiency of the college students in the Primary Educational as well as Science in Physical Activity and Sports Degree. This leads us to the importance of fulfilling the educational goals in the 21st century by using this online platform. The whole sample of the present study was composed by 135 subjects, all of them, students of the University of Alicante, of which 42.9% are men (n = 58 DT. 1.95) and 57.1% women (n = 77 DT. 2.30). The sample is segmented into two groups, one first group of 47 students of the degree "Sciences of Physical Activity and Sport" (CAFD) composed of 36 men and 11 women, and the second group of 88 students of "Teaching Training in Elementary School" of which 22 are men and 66 women. The aim of this research is to compare if there are significant differences in the acquisition of content between the groups of students of CAFD and Teaching degree depending on if the class is taught through a traditional methodology or through the use of the Schoology platform, using a Pre and Post questionnaire to assess the achievement of class objectives. For the data analysis, an unifactorial ANOVA analysis was performed (one-way ANOVA) to indicate if the variables are related and if the average of the dependent variable that reports the differences in the scores obtained between the traditional methodology and Schoology are different in the categories or segmented groups of CAFD and Teaching degree. The results obtained show that the averages between these groups are different and statistically significant (F: 35.917 p<0.001), highlighting that the CAFD group that used Schoology platform obtains greater differences with respect to the use of a traditional methodology, being more positive the results of the group that used the platform. This confirms that the proficiency of the subjects can be further enhanced using Schoology platform.