The United Nations (UN) identifies four key elements as agents for change and for addressing societal challenges: education, research, innovation and leadership. The use of technology, from a pedagogical and organizational point of view, in higher education institutions has brought about new challenges. The integration of them in the teaching–learning processes has experienced a great evolution, giving way to a digital transformation and the acquisition of new skills and knowledge, thus pointing towards quality education within the framework of sustainable development objectives. This document aims to describe and analyze the ways in which seven higher education institutions, three in Spain and four in Mexico, have taken up the challenge of adopting technologies and applying them to the educational process. To this end, in-depth interviews and direct observations were carried out. The results point to three dimensions: technological, pedagogical and organizational, which shed light on the different factors that influence the choice and availability of the use of technologies. The results indicate that contextual factors play a determinant role in the ability of an institution to profit from technologies to aid the educational process and guarantee its quality.

The use of technology, which is linked to active learning strategies, can contribute to better outcomes in Mathematics education. We analyse the conditions that are necessary for achieving an effective learning of Mathematics, aided by a robotic platform. Within this framework, the question raised was “What are the conditions that promote effective active math learning with robotic support?” Interventions at different educational scenarios were carried in order to explore three educational levels: elementary, secondary, and high school. Qualitative and quantitative analyses were performed, comparing the control and treatment groups for all scenarios through examinations, direct observations, and testimonials. The findings point to three key conditions: level, motivation, and teacher training. The obtained results show a very favourable impact on the attention and motivation of the students, and they allow for establishing the conditions that need to be met for an effective relationship between the teacher and the technological tool, so that better learning outcomes in Mathematics are more likely to be obtained.

Objetos de Realidad Aumentada: percepciones del alumnado de Pedagogía

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are perceived as emerging technologies for training and innovation in the educational context. They have become approaches for distance education in the face of the new challenges, changes, and crises experienced by the COVID-19 pandemic. They represent, in turn, new emerging opportunities as a response to the United Nations recommendations for open education and the development of sustainable goals. The presence of technologies in the development of educational tasks means that the acquisition of Digital Competences (DC) by teachers and students in training goes beyond the mere mastery of content and teaching methodologies. The research presented aims to analyze the educational possibilities of T-MOOCs for the development of DC in teachers, and as resources that favor autonomous and collaborative learning in innovative scenarios. The study sample is made up of 313 students of the Primary Education Degree at the University of Seville (Spain). For this purpose, two online questionnaires (Google Forms) were applied at the beginning of the course: the Digital Teaching Competence Questionnaire (DigCompEdu), and the Content Questionnaire: Digital Resources and Digital Pedagogy. The results obtained show that the students’ level of both digital competences and subject content is low to medium, so that training in educational technology is required for the acquisition of key digital competences. Based on the data obtained, the following actions are proposed: (a) The concretion of the contents structured by means of a learning guide and e-activities to be developed by the student body, taking into account the United Nations guidelines with regard to the Development of Sustainable Objectives; (b) The creation of a training and innovative environment under the T-MOOC architecture, based on open and distance learning due to the current health situation of COVID-19, which, on the one hand, empowers students to use digital tools, and on the other hand, facilitates the acquisition of the SDGs; and (c) The evaluation of the T-MOOC designed as a resource for autonomous, collaborative, guided learning in emerging contexts in which technologies and educational innovation play an important role for sustainable development.

The online social networks (OSN) have meant a transformation in the way of communicating and relating with people, and have reached a certain presence in the educational field, being used as an environment for collaborative work, alternative means of communication, learning of languages, platform or LMS for virtual training, and for tutoring and advising students. Adolescents and young people handle the OSN as preferred means for their communication and interaction, to extend their relationships, to locate and demand information, as an element of fun, as a means of coexistence and for the creation of new communication languages. For all these actions, the purpose of our study is to know and analyze the degree of addiction that young people and adolescents from different Latin American countries have towards OSN. For this, the scale of Sahin (2018) called “Social Media Addiction Scale-Student Form” (SMAS-SF) was adapted and was answered by 3223 young people from Chile, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Peru and the Dominican Republic. As results obtained, significant differences are observed among young people and adolescents from the different countries surveyed, and they also show strong signs that in their opinion they are not addicted to them.

Researchers primarily dedicate their time to teaching in Latin American universities. For this reason, it is essential to determine how teaching time affects (or contributes to) the scientific productivity of researchers working under these conditions. We analyzed the incidence of gender, groups taught at undergraduate and graduate levels, the researcher proficiency level, and the number of thesis students advised, among others, for the impact on the scientific productivity (annual publications) of a group of professors. We analyzed the data using both statistical and regression methods. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, the number of groups taught does not significantly influence research productivity; it is affected by other factors such as belonging to the Mexican Researcher System (SNI) or having a researcher or administrative position at the institution. Our results can help guide the formulation of academic and research policies that contribute to the scientific productivity of Latin American universities.