IMPLEMENTING A NEWS CHANNEL PROVIDED WITH A REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION FEED, AS A WAY TO IMPROVE THE SUDENTS’ ICTS COMPETENCES. A TEST DEVELOPED IN THE ANIMAL NUTRITION SUBJECT OF VETERINARY

J. Madrid, J. Orengo, F. Hernández, S. Martínez, M.J. López, A.F. Pelegrín

University of Murcia (SPAIN)
The Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) competences must be part of the cross competences acquired by students, during the educational period. In this sense, the incorporation of ICTs tools in Higher Education, must be promoted in order to achieve these ICTs competences. Thus, the Animal Nutrition subject of the Veterinary Faculty of the University of Murcia, developed a project to introduce a news channel about issues related with scientific, professional and legislative of Animal Nutrition (e.g. European Union and genetically modified organisms, feeds adulteration, enhancing meat quality through animal feeding, etc.). This channel was available for students and provided with a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed. Moreover, a link to the channel was allocated in the website of the course on the virtual campus. The aim of this research was to evaluate the use of the news channel and its implications on the marks obtained by the students, using a self-evaluation questionnaire. Also, a survey about the use and utility of the news channel was carried out. The number of questions answered by students ranged from a medium-low value depending on the question (17-45%). However, this data is positive since the scores obtained are not reckon on the final mark. The students that performed the test got the right answers, ranging this data from 54% to 96%, depending on the query. In addition, from a population of 92 students, the survey was answered by the 71.74%, which means a reliability of 90% with a 5% of sampling error. The 74.24% of the students that filled out the survey, have used the news channel. In general, the students considered the news very interesting, obtaining a value of 2.76 in a Likert scale (1-4). In conclusion, the news channel was an amusing and formative way to spread the knowledge and to improve the students’ ICTs competences.
keywords: higher education, icts, rss, education, ict competences.