Abstract:

The development of technology has contributed to enormous changes in society, in interactions and communications. These changes are also reflected in education.

MILAGE LEARN+ is an application for mobile devices that has been developed at the University of Algarve with the support of the ERAMUS+ project with partners from Portugal, Spain, Germany and Cyprus, enabling students to access educational content in and outside the classroom. The App works as a support tool for students which provides them the opportunity to solve tasks autonomously. In order to stimulate and support the implementation of the various activities proposed, MILAGE+ LEARN+ App interface incorporates gamification features and segmenting different levels of activities. The app provides detailed videos with the solution of problems and self-assessment scheme and peer review.

A questionnaire was addressed to all teachers trained to use the MILAGE LEARN+ platform. This questionnaire includes thirty-one questions, of which four are open-response and twenty-seven are closed-response.

In this paper we present how teachers, use this learning platform in their classroom, how often, with what intention, identify application weaknesses and identify new features to be developed.

Questions like “Does the resource this digital learning tool, MILAGE, makes a difference in performance of the students?”, “It is a facilitator of formative assessement?”, “Does it allow the consolidation of learning?”, and “What is the teacher’s role when using this digital learning ecosystem?” were clarified during the analysis of the results.

We conclude that, according to the perception of these teachers, it is important that MILAGE allow association between analog and digital, include the gamification component, enable a variety of tasks and allow pedagogical differentiation. Taking into account the opinion of the teachers who were part of this sample, students like to use MILAGE, stay motivated and take advantage of self-assessment and peer assessment to self-regulate and consolidate their learning.

Finally, we can mention that the APP MILAGE is used for the teachers in different ways, methodologies and purposes.

Pedagogical practice has been rethought in terms of the different digital educational platforms, and this APP allows expanding the school environment beyond the classroom and making learning more appealing, engaging and dynamic.

Keywords:

Education, technology, learn, APP, teacher, MILAGE LEARN+, digital education.