Abstract:

Virtual classrooms for teaching from its flexible and dynamic design allow collaborative work, monitoring students’ progress, interaction and access to information and learning content. They provide diversify and make learning processes more dynamic in educational institutions. It is essential to arrange the periodic assessments and control of new tools and applications for understanding the perceptions of users of virtual classroom, serving as a feedback mechanism and improvement in teaching and learning processes.

This article has an objective to evaluate the usage of virtual classroom in the learning process of the students of the Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios from based on the four aspects:
(1) the role of virtual classrooms in the teaching
(2) The virtual classroom interaction
(3) the perception of current tools
(4) the autonomy which is offered to students

The investigation is based on the exploratory research with non-experimental, transverse and on the fieldwork. 292 surveys of undergraduate students were conducted at the Faculty of Education of the Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios. The questions to measure each of the 4 factors were designed and applied on the basis on variable questions and measurement scales due to construct validity.

Cronbach's Alpha Method was used to measure reliability of the tool in each of the factors, obtaining values higher than 0.7, in this way the sub-factor of each questionnaire is considered to be reliable. To quantify the levels of association between the associated factors was applied the Cramer's V coefficient, it had allowed to conclude that the independence of statistics variables that it’s value does not depend on the number of categories in the variables analyzed.

As a result it was found out that the strongest association was between the frequency of use of the virtual classroom with the perception of its importance in the teaching, while the weaker association of frequency of use of the virtual classrooms was recorded to evaluate against the perception of current applications.

Moreover, it was noticed that according to different types of students explanatory capacity of the factors evaluated versus the use of virtual classrooms increases, this is because the association coefficients between the factors and the frequency of use when the population increase subdivided according to special features such as educational level, experience in virtual classrooms and the curriculum.

Keywords:

Virtual classrooms, university students, Corporación Universitaria Minuto de Dios.