Abstract:

The educational blog or edublog is an innovation tool that responds to the needs and motivations shown by students in the field of higher education, so it should be a key factor for success in improving the teaching-learning processes at this educational stage. Although its use has generalized in recent years, further research is still needed to identify the characteristics that this type of tool should have in order to promote its use by students, as well as the satisfaction of this group with its use; from a gender perspective. The objective of this study was based on the development of an edublog as a teaching innovation strategy for the improvement of teaching and learning processes in the context of the subject "Introduction to Psychology" of the Degree in Criminology of the University of Alicante. Furthermore, the study was aimed to the analysis of the gender differences in the students' degree of satisfaction with it, as well as to identify the possible predictors of this satisfaction from a gender perspective too. This edublog was created at the beginning of the course and was used by both students and teaching staff throughout the course for several teaching activities. After completing the course, students were asked to participate in an online survey which included an elaborated ad-hoc questionnaire oriented to the evaluation of the degree of satisfaction with the blog, and other characteristics such as the design and ease of use of the blog, the quality, variety and update of the contents of the blog, and blog navigation design. All questions included a rating scale from 0 to 10. Participants in the study were a total of 65 students, 15 men (23.1%) and 50 women (76.9%), with an average age of 18.32±1.20 years. All participants were students of the subject "Introduction to Psychology", and had used the blog regularly. Descriptive, T-test and linear regression models were performed. Participants exhibited a total satisfaction score of 8.14 ± 1.11, which shows a high degree of satisfaction on the part of the students. However, significant differences were found between genders t(63)=2.148, p=.036, obtaining higher scores of satisfaction for men (8.67±1.04) compared to women (7.98±1.09). When predictors of satisfaction were evaluated, differences were also found. For men, only the quality of contents of the blog was a significant predictor of their satisfaction, explaining 50% of variance. In the case of women, quality of the contents, ease of use of the blog and update levels of the contents were significant predictors, explaining 60% of variance in satisfaction levels with the blog. Based on the obtained results, the global satisfaction with the blog is high, especially in the case of men. Moreover, several characteristics of the blog have shown a significant role as satisfaction predictors, being the quality of contents the most important one in both men and women. Only in the case of women, other aspects of the contents, such as the updating levels or the ease of use of the blog revealed as significant predictors. These results point out the necessity of adopting a gender perspective in the inclusion of innovative teaching strategies, such as those related to edublogs.

Keywords:

Edublog, higher education, teaching and learning processes, gender.