Abstract:

As well as the great developments occurring in information and communication technologies (ICT) and their inclusion in the routine activities of all societies, we are currently experiencing enormous growth in e-learning type education. The most direct evidence of this is the vast range of courses and additional training that exist for both official university qualifications and postgraduate programmes.

Students find that there are numerous advantages when they participate in this type of learning. It is usually considered a convenient and more affordable way of adding to curricular training. There is also the fact that it is possible to access very specific qualifications and courses provided by prestigious universities which are far from the student's place of residence. These are some of the main incentives, but there is no question that there are many others that should be added.

Teachers are adopting distance learning as a normal process, derived from universities’ adaptation to the new demands. They are also seen as an addition to their jobs as teaching staff in in-person classes where they follow the traditional pattern, because it is common that both teaching modalities are used in teaching planning programmes. Nevertheless, when it comes to planning an online subject, numerous aspects need to be adapted and reformulated, and there are many differences with respect to when in-person training is implemented. Even so, one very common error is that teachers simply attempt to simply transfer the teaching habits that they use in traditional lessons to online training itineraries.

This work compiles some key aspects that should be taken into consideration for the daily management of teaching an online subject, specifically applied to the Master in Valuation, Cadastre and Territorial Information Systems of the Universidad Miguel Hernández in Elche. The experience of the authors, who are teachers in different on-line and partly in-person master programmes, is taken as a reference. Emphasis has been given to all aspects which, experience has shown, give the best results for studying the subject.

Among these fundamental points, aspects highlighted include those which affect the preparation of materials, proposals for complementary activities, sequential timing of both the delivery of materials to students and the deadlines within which they must respond to the different tasks, ways of communicating and sharing information with students, etc. Evaluation is of particular interest, this generally being based on a continous process, making it difficult to mark, without any clear certainty as to the real authorship of the work submitted.

Keywords:

e-learning pedagogy, teaching innovation, ICT, e-evaluation, university education.