Abstract:

Background
Spanish Universities are immersed in the process of adaptation to the EHEA (European Space of Superior Education). This process has been perceived as an opportunity to modernize and improve the quality of teaching at the Spanish universities. Amog the goals of this process, the universities aim to increase the mobility of both students and professors and to achieve better coordination among European universites. This better coordination will be reached with the creation of joint degrees both at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Aims
In this paper we consider the prominent role that the New Information and Comunications Technologies (NICT) could play in achieving the previosly mentioned goals. In particular, we analyze the efficiency of videoconference as a teaching tool.

Method
A large dataset, including actual academic performance, previous academic performance and other relevant factors, for students at groups using videoconference and traditional methods was built. Multivariate analyses were performed in order to test whether students at videoconference groups presented differences in performance at a significant level.

Results
The results indicated that videoconference does not affect negatively students´ performance, although in some subjects it appear as a significant factor, an analysis of marginal effects indicated that, in the worst case, it affected at an irrelevant level.