COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONTENT LEARNING THROUGH SCHOOLOGY AND MICRO-TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The dynamics of physical education classes need learning methods where student participation can be active and participatory. In addition, students should receive a proper preparation to teach in the future, therefore it is important that new methodologies, such as micro-teaching, occupy an important part in the teaching-learning process. With this method, the conditions of the classroom environment are simplified since the teacher instructs a small group of students for a short time, trying to practice an ability to teach. However, with the evolution of teaching, other methodologies are taking on special relevance. Learning management systems (LMS) are structured platforms to work online, but are also used for combined learning or inverted classes. The flexibility of these learning environments allows students to access contents when they want and therefore to learn at their own pace. It is the case of Schoology, a virtual environment where each member has a profile with personal information and in which opinions and resources are shared, discussion forums are held and has other tools such as bulletin boards, private messaging that strengthen the learning process. The objective of the present study is to compare two teaching methods adapted to the preparation of Sport Sciences teachers to evaluate with which method a greater acquisition of contents is acquired. The study was carried out with 43 students (28 male and 15 female) final-year students of the Sport Sciences Degree at the University of Alicante. Students were divided into two groups where different learning methodologies were used during four weeks. In group 1 the students received the contents through the virtual Schoology platform where they had the material reinforced with audiovisual material and complementary information. In group 2 the students acquired the contents through the learning style of micro-teaching. In order to evaluate the contents, the students made a pretest before the intervention and a posttest when the intervention ended. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) v.22 was used to process the data. The statistic used was the t-Student test to compare the mean difference between pretest and posttest between both groups. The results showed that content acquisition increased in both groups. In the microteaching group, an improvement of 2.35 ± 1.43 points was obtained between the pretest and the posttest. In the group that acquired the knowledge through the Schoology platform, the increase was even greater with an average of 5.15 ± 1.27 points. Significant differences were found (p<0.001) between the difference of improvement of the groups. Although both methods of learning have shown an improvement in the acquisition of content, the Schoology platform offers a series of tools that reinforce the learning process and therefore improve learning. As this study was done with students of fourth year (last year of grade), this result suggests that new learning methodologies can be practiced successfully in groups with much of their learning through classical methodologies.