INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ARE VALUABLE RESOURCES FOR BETTER TEACHING AND LEARNING

University education faces constant demands and new challenges to adequate itself to contemporary socioeconomic, environmental and didactic demands. Searching for alternatives in higher education is compulsory to keep methods updated, allowing the University to fulfill its mission as instrument for teaching and learning (T&L) [1 & 3]. Modern education must also take advantage of information and communication technologies (ICT) to achieve its goals on T&L. Such educational resources are becoming gradually incorporated at our University, in order to facilitate daily classroom presentations and to seek for more student-teacher interaction, making easier to understand all kind of themes of interest, without forgetting that different individuals require different didactic approaches. A pre-requisite to achieve all these goals is to get qualified teachers familial with ICT. Therefore, usage of ICT as an important resource for education of Chemistry, Pharmacy, Biology and Immunology students is constantly promoted at our University [2]. Several actions have been taken to promote ICT as educative resource in T&L. Our activities have included courses to update teachers in software utilization as support to produce didactic material. Forums that favor contact, communication and exchange of information with experts in various topics, activities that favor team work between our students, creation of new ways to evaluate students at various points of their education, blogs design, and others. By these means, we have attracted many teachers to participate, to expand their competence in ICT, and to apply it to their daily work, adding new methods to the traditional ones and thus enriching their teaching activities.
Supported by DGAPA PAPIME PE102710

References:
[1] Celestino Gutiérrez A., Echegaray Legarreta O., Guenaga Garai G. Integración de las TIC en la Educación Superior. Rev. Medios Educación 21: 21-28, 2003
[2] Lynn Meek V., Teichler U. & Kearney M.L. (ed.), Higher Education, Research and Innovation: Changing Dynamics. Report on the UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge 2001-2009, 2009
[3] Martín-Laborda, R. Las nuevas tecnologías en la educación. ‘Cuadernos/ Sociedad de la Información 5’. Fundación AUNA. Madrid, España, 2005