Over recent years, educational institutions have been making increasing use of virtual environments to set up collaborative activities for learners. While it is recognized that teachers play an important role in facilitating learner collaboration online, they may not have the necessary skills to do so successfully. Thus, a small-scale professional development programme was set up and piloted by two distance universities. The aims were to develop teachers’ experience of online group work, to trial a set of pilot activities that would raise awareness of factors contributing to successful collaborative online activity, and to identify professional development needs in this area. This article reports on the hands-on experience of a group of 20 teachers, examines some of the competences that are needed to successfully collaborate in virtual environments, and presents the skills that teachers need to foster online collaborative learning in the virtual classroom. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected, examining the levels of participation among participants, the collaborative activity of two groups, and teachers’ perception of the collaboration that took place. The skills identified include planning and managing the collaboration, designing appropriate activities, giving clear instructions and getting students to negotiate ground rules for participation, moderating at the right level, and choosing the right environment and the appropriate tool(s). While this study was carried out with language teachers, many of the findings are applicable to other subject areas where growing emphasis is placed on the development of collaborative skills.

The great popularisation of social media at the beginning of the 21st century has led to the production of many empirical studies in an attempt to explore the opportunities these platforms provide for different activities, such as learning and updating for professionals. This study aims to identify and summarise the main characteristics of research into social media and professional development published between 2013 and 2017. We analysed the years, journals, conceptual background, research methodologies, data collection tools, professional disciplines, educational contexts, types of social media and characteristics of social media that can generate learning opportunities. A total of 44 articles were selected and analysed from peer-reviewed journals. Findings revealed that (1) an upward trend with respect to research on social media and professional development; (2) surveys were the main research method for collecting data about social media; (3) health and education sciences are the most studied fields of knowledge; (4) there is a special interest in the study of social media in informal learning contexts; (5) Twitter is the most studied social media platform and (6) social media seems to be a sustainable support for professional development due to its open, social and flexible nature. Implications of findings for future research are also discussed.

Following asynchronous online discussion activities as a complex communication process is a demanding task for teachers. In this paper, the authors have explored the potential in supporting such activity through learning analytics. From the beginning, the authors acknowledged the limitations of technology to support the complexities of a pedagogical activity. Therefore, the methodology used was participatory design-based research (DBR) divided into two main stages. The first design phase dealt with the engagement of teachers and pedagogical experts in defining the data and metrics to be used to support the pedagogical concepts. The second consisted of an implementation phase including pilots with students and with crucial engagement of teachers in commenting their understanding over students’ learning processes and the feedback the teachers could offer to them. Overall, the students shown improvements in their performance as monitored through the learning analytics group in contrast with control groups. The discussion over the design and its results could be potentially extrapolated to other educational contexts.

Considering the expansion of active pedagogies that consider the student as the centre of the teaching and learning process, their role during the assessment process cannot be overlooked. That implies a change in the teacher’s role from a communicator of the student’s mark to an open system in which teachers and students get involved in the learning process and develop online assessment skills. From a description of a concrete experience of continuous e-assessment in a subject at the UOC, this paper explores the advantages of the active role of students in the e-assessment of competency acquisition. In this subject, the student is assessed, using a project based learning methodology, from two dimensions provided by continuous assessment: on the one hand, the assessment of the process followed during the development of the activities based on the outcomes of each phase of the projects and process monitoring and, on the other hand, the assessment of the final outcome. Hence, students participate in both the assessment of the process and the final outcome. The process assessment, developed in the framework of teamwork, is produced in a self-assessment process in which both the student and peer participation in a work group are analysed, thereby developing a dynamic peer-assessment. In addition, a process of reflection regarding teamwork is carried out at the end of each phase of the project, based on an interactive process among the members of the group. The evaluation of the results focuses on an interactive assessment based on the analysis of the projects developed by other groups at the final stage of the subject. In order to analyse the students’ perception about the e-assessment methodology and their role during this process, a quantitative and online questionnaire was designed and administered at the final stage of the course. The results revealed a high level of satisfaction with the e-assessment activities of the course and an improvement of the learning process.

La pandemia ocasionada por el COVID-19 ha acelerado la integración del aprendizaje en línea en la educación superior (ES), y las universidades deben adaptarse a un escenario de no presencialidad hacia sistemas de aprendizaje híbridos. La transformación digital es un proceso que deben llevar a cabo las universidades y que requiere cambios sustanciales y estratégicos en prácticamente todos sus procesos. En este artículo se presenta el caso de una universidad creada y desarrollada en línea y cuyas experiencias pueden ser útiles a otras universidades que quieran emprender un camino similar. La investigación realizada se enmarca en el proyecto europeo "Empower Competences for Onlife Learning in HE'' (ECOLHE), desarrollado a través de un consorcio de instituciones de Italia, Grecia, Irlanda, Chipre y Cataluña. En el estudio presentado se aplican diferentes instrumentos de recogida de información como entrevistas en profundidad con responsables académicos, organización de grupos de discusión con profesores-investigadores, profesores/tutores, así como personal administrativo y técnico y un cuestionario online dirigido a los alumnos. En este trabajo se presentan diferentes visiones sobre los principales elementos y dificultades de una universidad digitalizada destacando que la tecnología debe ser una forma de mejorar la enseñanza, la investigación y el intercambio de conocimiento y que cambiar de un sistema tradicional presencial a un sistema en línea o híbrido no consiste únicamente en implementar la tecnología. Se aportan además una serie de conclusiones y lecciones aprendidas que pueden ser consideradas a la hora de iniciar un proceso de transformación digital en la ES.