In the last fifteen years communication paradigms have radically changed. From relations mostly based on synchronous and face-to-face conversations, to formal emails and phone calls and, today, videoconferences and different asynchronous chat mobile applications. This change has also affected higher education, where many innovative strategies and instructional tools enabling communication among students and with professors, have been implemented. The final objective of all these mechanisms is to increase the impact of the tutorial action, thanks to a fast and continuous interaction with professors and the collaborative learning among students. However, informal observations seem to show that some tools and/or strategies are more successful than others, depending on the teaching and learning methodology. Therefore, this paper aims to study the impact of different communication tools and strategies in the higher education students’ learning, including academic results, motivation competence acquisition level. We are focusing on blended and online methodologies, as they are implemented in most current engineering degrees. The study considers five subjects analyzed during three different courses. Four different communication instructional tools were also studied, including forums, emails, Telegram and Discord. Besides, four different communication strategies were also considered. Results were evaluated using statistical methods. Results show the improvement in the students’ learning is especially relevant when chat applications and immediate responses are provided in the context of online teaching methodologies. In blended methodologies, on the other hand, chat applications are clearly preferred too, although improvement may be achieved with almost any tool.
In the last fifteen years communication paradigms have radically changed. From relations mostly based on synchronous and face-to-face conversations, to formal emails and phone calls and, today, videoconferences and different asynchronous chat mobile applications. This change has also affected higher education, where many innovative strategies and instructional tools enabling communication among students and with professors, have been implemented. The final objective of all these mechanisms is to increase the impact of the tutorial action, thanks to a fast and continuous interaction with professors and the collaborative learning among students. However, informal observations seem to show that some tools and/or strategies are more successful than others, depending on the teaching and learning methodology. Therefore, this paper aims to study the impact of different communication tools and strategies in the higher education students’ learning, including academic results, motivation competence acquisition level. We are focusing on blended and online methodologies, as they are implemented in most current engineering degrees. The study considers five subjects analyzed during three different courses. Four different communication instructional tools were also studied, including forums, emails, Telegram and Discord. Besides, four different communication strategies were also considered. Results were evaluated using statistical methods. Results show the improvement in the students’ learning is especially relevant when chat applications and immediate responses are provided in the context of online teaching methodologies. In blended methodologies, on the other hand, chat applications are clearly preferred too, although improvement may be achieved with almost any tool. Read More
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