Abstract:

Innovative application in the education field plan to provide curriculum and content development, such as: use of instructional technologies (such as virtual and augmented reality), web-based platforms (no territorial boundaries), Artificial intelligence bot communication tools, audio-visual imaging, and 3-D technology, as a enabler for students to experience richer learning methodologies, have an enhanced customised learning scenario with a richer educational experience, and for teachers to be more efficient and effective.

General Objective:
Identify the technologies that are ideal to enhance the dissemination of knowledge in the learning process and the student’s receptiveness to the learning experiences based on these new technologies approaches.

The work pretends to enquire the students about their IT knowledge and preferences about the adoption of Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Blockchain and Artificial Inteligence –as new tools in the classes through the enrolment of students in a focus group conducted in two distinct private Universities. The two focus groups consisted of: at University one - 3 students of computer science engineering and one student of Electronic and Automation Engineering; at University two - one student in the area of Education, one in Sports, one in Technologies, one in Management and one Social Education. The focus groups lasted about 30 minutes, with the respective authorization of the presidents of the Universities and were carried out by two researchers, authors of paper, one in each University. The interviews were pre-authorized by the school boards, by the students, as well as their audio recording. The anonymity and confidentiality of those involved in the investigation were safeguarded. The interviews were transcribed. With the support of the qualitative analysis software, webQDA, the data resulting from the content analysis of the interviews of the two Universities and document analysis were triangulated and validated according to the Delphi method, for greater validity and reliability of the results.

From the main results, the following three categories were identified:
i) challenges: big-data hosting, cultural adoption, integration issues, nascent technology, control, security, and privacy;
ii) advantages: user empowerment, high quality data, durability, reliability, longevity, process integrity, and
iii) disadvantages: instability, energy consumption, cost of creation.

For students from both Universities, the use of technologies in the learning process poses some issues. Students at University 2 are concerned about the environment, for example, energy costs, data protection and privacy is a general concern for students at both Universities. They fear for the security of their academic data, since their curricular processes could be made available in a cloud where any professor could have access and, who knows, a hacker. On the other hand, the intensive and bad use of technologies in some cases of technologies in the classroom creates psychological instability and makes the teacher-student lose social interaction. They highly value the teacher's explanation. They made a comparison with emergency remote teaching classes, at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, referring to how much they lacked social contact between peers. They mentioned that feared the use of technologies by some aged professors, that have much knowledge and experience that can’t be transmitted by using technologies.

Keywords:

Students, Conceptions on use of Technologies, Higher Education, Learning Process.