Abstract:

High school and undergraduate level teachers from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, from various disciplines, participated in the International Diploma in Innovation in University Teaching, organized by members of the Specios and Interactive Systems Group for Education, of the Institute of Applied Sciences and Technology. During 2019 – 2022, they developed 67 teaching-learning sequences, in which their students carried out information -recoding activities linked to the topics they proposed.

Multiple representations play a decisive role in teaching practice, since teachers can enhance students' cognitive abilities by developing the same topic through different teaching tools such as writing, mental and conceptual maps, videos and comics. The students take an active part in the construction of knowledge as they allow the cognitive skills that lead to the ability to encode, process and interpret information from their environment to be enhanced. Representations are the means through which human beings interpret and describe reality. The cognitive implications that the student has to apply to transform information from one representation to another (an activity called "recoding"), involves processing, categorizing, encoding and interpreting information, according to situational demands and personal objectives, to form concepts and achieve learning significant.
Recoding, in general, involves translating to a code and/or from a code. The task of recoding information is located within more or less deep levels of mental processing, as it requires understanding and interpretation.

The teachers' comments regarding the benefits of information recoding for learning of their students were extremely positive; for example,it favored the search and organization of information, the development of critical thinking, the selection and management of digital resources, the development of information analysis and synthesis skills, collaborative work, interdisciplinary collaboration and, above all, the development of multiple representations of the selected concepts.

Two examples of teachers' expressions about infographics created by their students are:
- Regarding the topic Levels of ecological organization, a teacher expressed: “Infographics are an excellent resource for students to think, synthesize, organize information, dialogue and reach consensus to capture their information and represent a series of visual elements that contribute to the development of synthesis of information, which can contribute to making its reading more attractive for the viewer”.
- On the topic Enzymes, a teacher indicated: “The infographic prepared by the students presents information organized in a systematic way. It allows a presentation that is easy to explain and understand, so that it can be prepared individually or in small teams, favoring collaborative work that involves reaching a consensus on the selection and recoding of the information, which will be presented in said representation”.

Keywords:

Information recoding, multiple representations, teaching-learning sequences, university professors, Mexican students.