Abstract:

The report entitled "The Future of Jobs Report 2020" of the World Economic Forum highlights the “technology use, monitoring and control” as one of the most important and emerging labor skills for 2025. In a similar vein, McKinsey & Company’s survey find that 87% of the human resources (HR) managers interviewed identify information and communication technologies (ICT) as one of the most important skills for the labor market. In this context, introducing ICT skills within the university environment is extremely crucial. These ICTs help students acquire the tools they need to obtain a quick response to their personal and educational needs (Salas, 2020). Moreover, the use of ICT in the university teaching environment offers an opportunity to improve student motivation, adapting their daily customs to the educational space within the classrooms (Soto-Martínez et al., 2022).

The inclusion of active learning methodologies is thus useful to increase academic performance within the university context (Soto-Martínez et al., 2022). For this reason, teachers are driven to these active methodologies that, beyond achieving the integration of the educational field to these technological requirements, manage to attract and motivate students (Carrasco-Hernandez et al., 2020). In this context, Wooclap has been developed as a novel technological tool, whose growth has been exponential in the last three years. Wooclap allows teachers to integrate multitude of interaction elements (e.g., open and multiple-choice questions, brainstorming, images, videos, etc.) within their content presentations, contributing to dynamize sessions. All of this, in addition increasing student participation and active listening, is also useful to measure student progress.

In this context, the aim of this paper is twofold: firstly, to check if the Wooclap tool improves academic performance and student satisfaction in a university subject which belongs to the Business Economics field; and secondly, to examine the characteristics of those students who are more adapted to this teaching methodology within the university teaching-learning processes. This methodology was implemented in the Degree in Labor Relations and Human Resources (at the University of Murcia) during the academic year 2022-2023, and our sample is composed of 168 students.

Our results show that student’s academic performance is worst when students do not participate in the Wooclap activities. Also, Wooclap is the factor that most influences learning outcomes and performance. Similarly, the success and performance rates of the subject are higher in the group of students who have participated in Wooclap activities compared to those students who have not participated. Finally, we find that participation in Wooclap activities is higher in students enrolling for the first time in the subject compared to retained students.

References:
[1] Carrasco-Hernández, A.J., Lozano-Reina, G., Lucas-Pérez, M.E., Madrid-Garre, M.F., & Sánchez-Marín, G. (2020). Developing new learning tools in the classroom: the Kahoot experience. Journal of Management and Business Education, 3(3), 214-235.
[2] Soto-Martínez, G., Martínez-Saura, H. F., & Sánchez-López, M.C. (2022). Metodologías activas en el ámbito universitario: Wooclap. In Conference proceedings. CIVINEDU 2022: 6th International Virtual Conference on Educational Research and Innovation (p. 415-418). REDINE.

Keywords:

Wooclap, student performance and satisfaction, learning process, active learning methodologies, active teaching methodologies.