The objective of this article is to analyze the didactic functionality of a chatbot to improve the results of the students of the National University of Distance Education (UNED / Spain) in accessing the university in the subject of Spanish Language. For this, a quasi-experimental experiment was designed, and a quantitative methodology was used through pretest and posttest in a control and experimental group in which the effectiveness of two teaching models was compared, one more traditional based on exercises written on paper and another based on interaction with a chatbot. Subsequently, the perception of the experimental group in an academic forum about the educational use of the chatbot was analyzed through text mining with tests of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), pairwise distance matrix and bigrams. The quantitative results showed that the students in the experimental group substantially improved the results compared to the students with a more traditional methodology (experimental group / mean: 32.1346 / control group / mean: 28.4706). Punctuation correctness has been improved mainly in the usage of comma, colon and periods in different syntactic patterns. Furthermore, the perception of the students in the experimental group showed that they positively value chatbots in their teaching–learning process in three dimensions: greater “support” and companionship in the learning process, as they perceive greater interactivity due to their conversational nature; greater “feedback” and interaction compared to the more traditional methodology and, lastly, they especially value the ease of use and the possibility of interacting and learning anywhere and anytime.

This study analysed the digital competence of 1,073 students at one Italian and two Spanish universities using the COBADI 2.0 (Basic Digital Competences/Registered Trademark 2970648) questionnaire. A quantitative methodology was applied to university students’ use of, and competence in, three areas of DigCom 2.1: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, and digital content creation. The results showed that these future graduates had an upper intermediate level of competence in information and digital literacy, and communication and collaboration, but a lower intermediate level in terms of digital content creation, particularly in the creation and dissemination of multimedia content using different tools. Two student profiles were identified for time spent online: those who dedicated a lot of their time to gaming or interacting on social media, and those who used most of their online time to searching for information and completing academic work.

Technological innovation and digitization have posed a challenge to the financial sector globally. Fintech is the term used to designate the application of new technologies to financial services. The aim of the study is to analyse this research subject worldwide during the period 1975–2019. To this end, bibliometric techniques were applied to 2012 articles, obtaining findings of the productivity of scientific research, of the main thematic axes and their evolution. Scientific activity increased, mainly in the past decade, with 45% of publications. The main thematic areas were Business, Management and Accounting, Engineering, Social Sciences and Computer Science. Seven research lines were identified, aimed at analysing the aspects financial, economic, technology transfer, investment, innovation, partnerships and institutions and commercial. Future research lines should develop analyses on banking, financial services trade, territorial development, legal, management, research methodologies and the sustainability of financial technologies. It was verified that there is a growing and dynamic interest in scientific activity on financial technologies at an international level. The findings obtained are a complement to the knowledge of financial technologies and allow the relationship between science and technology to be established, and to inform the decision-making process.

The Future of MOOCs: Adaptive Learning or Business Model?