APRENDIZAJE-SERVICIO EN LA UNIVERSIDAD: AYUDANDO A LA ESCUELA A ATENDER A LA DIVERSIDAD A TRAVÉS DE LAS TIC.

Creating societies of the future goes hand in hand with promoting sustainable education and, therefore, universities must train educators who, through their own professional development, put into practice methodologies that are active, participative, and focused on the overall development of their students. The use of methodologies like Design Thinking and the use of social networks generate learning dynamics that bring into play key competences in the development of dedicated future educators. In this study, 156 students from Education degrees at the University of Jaen analyze how the use of these methodologies supports the learning process in dimensions such as creativity, motivation, communication, and involvement in learning, among others. The results shows that all dimensions correlate positively, and that the benefits derived from the use of these methodologies are perceived by students as greater than the effort required to put them into practice.

While the learning benefits of retrieval activities have been clearly demonstrated in laboratory settings, evidence on their usefulness in naturalistic school settings is still scant. The goal of the present studies was to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of retrieval-based learning in children (fourth and sixth grades) when school teachers themselves design and implement retrieval activities relating to genuine curriculum contents. Three studies were conducted in a public elementary school with fourth and sixth graders and their teachers. Two of the studies involved mathematics and one dealt with social sciences. Teachers used learning activities that required students to recall part of previously taught concepts, while different concepts in the same unit were worked through with those learning activities that were normally used by each teacher. Two out of three studies revealed that, relative to business-as-usual learning activities, performing retrieval activities during classes led to better performance in the assessments at the end of the lessons. Overall, our finding provides preliminary evidence that retrieval activities can enhance learning in elementary school children when they are devised by teachers in the exercise of their professional duties. These results have important practical implications and suggest that, if teachers are aware of the value of retrieval activities in fostering meaningful learning, these activities could be successfully embedded in their daily duties even when considering the constraints imposed by school reality.