Abstract:

One of the most relevant aspects of the inclusion of ICT in the classroom means the presentation of theoretical and practical content in alternative formats to the traditional one. Hence, the possibility of including ICT resources in class, such as audiovisuals, could allow to cover the learning preferences of the whole students, regardless of the idiosyncratic learning styles of each of them. The objective of the present study was based on the inclusion of audiovisual material as a strategy of teaching innovation for the improvement of teaching-learning processes in the context of the subject "Introduction to Psychology". This innovation strategy was implemented in the e-learning group of the Criminology Degree of the University of Alicante. Moreover, another objective was to analyze the degree of students’ satisfaction with the audiovisual materials, and the identification of the characteristics of these materials that play a main role as predictors of the students’ satisfaction with them. Different audiovisual resources were included in each of the topics of the program of that subject of the e-learning group. In each of them, the students had a series of audiovisual resources, structured and organized according to the main theme of this topic. When the course finished, an online survey was administered to the enrolled students in the course in order to identify levels of satisfaction with the audiovisual materials and those predictors of these satisfaction levels. The sample was composed of 36 students (17 men and 19 women) with a mean age of 28 years from the online Criminology Grade of the University of Alicante (Spain) enrolled in the course “Introduction to Psychology”. Participants completed the survey at the end of the 2017-2018 academic course. This survey was composed by a questionnaire elaborated ad-hoc including sociodemographic questions and items regarding the perceived satisfaction with the inclusion of audiovisual material, and other items oriented to the assessment of quality of the material, variety of the included materials, materials update levels and the design, ease of use and accessibility of the materials. All questions included a rating scale from 0 to 10. Descriptive and linear regression models were conducted in order to identify possible predictors of students’ satisfaction with the audiovisual material. In the case of students’ satisfaction with the audiovisual materials, the obtained mean was 8.31 ± 1.09, which shows a high degree of satisfaction with them. Predictive conducted models showed that the quality and the ease of use and accessibility of the materials are the main predictors of students’ satisfaction, explaining the 60% of variance. The obtained results highlight the convenience of the inclusion of audiovisual materials as a key aspect for the improvement of the teaching-learning processes in the context of higher education. However, in order to increase the student’s satisfaction, these materials should be of high quality and highly accessible to reinforce in an effective way the theoretical and practical contents, especially in e-learning courses.

Acknowledgement:
This research was supported by the Program of Networks-I3CE of Investigation in University Teaching (Program Networks) from the Vice-Rectorate of Quality and Educational Innovation and Education Sciences Institute of the University of Alicante (2017–2018). Ref.: (4222).

Keywords:

Audiovisual materials, e-learning, higher education, teaching-learning.