Abstract:

Teaching subjects related to ICT imply a very high level of exigency for the lecturers involved. Due to the breakneck speed at which advances telecommunications sector it is of great importance to be up to date with the news of the field, providing a relevant and valid transfer of knowledge. The traditional teaching of telecommunications involves the transmission of certain knowledge of static character. However, vast majority of the ICT-related technologies and knowledge is constantly evolving. This greatly hinders the teaching of subjects related to telecommunications and the teacher is faced with the problem of constantly changing and updating the contents, since the objective is to teach an up to date course. It depends on the technological situation of the current moment. The use of social networks, which are so widespread among university students, may be a suitable supplement for students to be able to acquire up to date information. This way student’s complement their knowledge acquired in classroom and keep up contact with ICT and new and emerging technologies, favoring the continuous immersion in the telecommunications sector. This situation is useful because the objective is to provide the students the necessary tools to keep up to date and in touch with ICT.

The overall objective of this paper is to show how the different social networks under study allow the students learning by interacting with the current telecommunications sector news. Moreover, social networks provide a common discussion forum among students, lecturers and anyone interested in the ICT sector. This way, a collaborative learning network is created.

Over the last years we have been using several interactive and social tools, evaluating the interaction of students with the different platforms in order to reveal which one was more suitable for our task. That is to say, which one is able to allow a richer transfer of information for students.

In this work we have used as tools a blog, a wiki (Wikitel), Moodle work environment and a twitter account (@TelecoUA). From all of them we have analyzed which one provides the best results nowadays.

The results obtained are totally revealing, due to the popularity of smart phones and tablets nowadays. As a conclusion, this work is the result of various learning research projects in which the authors have participated previously. All of them teach several subjects in the finishing years of the Degree in Engineering in Sound and Image Telecommunications and the Master in Telecommunication, courses that are taught at the Polytechnic School of the University of Alicante.

Keywords:

ICT, telecommunications, social networks.