IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE USE OF ICT TOOLS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION

This article analyzes the self-concept about digital competence in university professors of Sciences, Health Sciences and Engineering and the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) use habits of professors in these areas. For this purpose, a survey designed by the authors was completed by 340 university professors in the aforementioned areas. Based on the answers obtained from this survey, a descriptive quantitative analysis of the assessments of the self-concept of digital competence and training of the participants, of the didactic use of ICT and the frequency of their use before and after the pandemic has been carried out. The results showed that the digital competence of the professors is intermediate, but their training is valued as low, especially in Sciences and Health Sciences. The assessment of ICT is very good. The pandemic has caused a generalized increase in the use of ICT, mainly in Health Sciences, which is the area in which university students were most reluctant to use them. In addition, a gender gap which did not exist before the pandemic has been generated favoring females in the use of ICT in Science and Engineering. An age-based digital gap that existed before the pandemic has also been corrected in Health Sciences © Article's contents are provided on an Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 Creative commons International License. Readers are allowed to copy, distribute and communicate article's contents, provided the author's and JOTSE journal's names are included. It must not be used for commercial purposes. To see the complete licence contents, please visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Statistical Analysis of Professors' Assessment Regarding the Didactic Use of Virtual Reality: Engineering vs. Health

Virtual reality (VR) has proven to be an efficient didactic resource in higher education after the pandemic caused by COVID-19, mainly in the Engineering and Health Sciences degrees. In this work, quantitative research is carried out on the assessments made by Latin American professors of Health Sciences and Engineering of the didactic use of VR. Specifically, the gaps by university tenure in the assessments given by the professors of each of the two areas of knowledge analyzed are identified. For this purpose, a validated questionnaire has been used, which has been applied to a sample of 606 professors. As a result, it is shown that the professors of Engineering and Health Sciences have similar self-concepts of their digital competence, but the Engineering professors give higher values to the technical and didactic aspects of VR. Moreover, in both areas, professors from private universities rate VR technologies more highly than those from public universities, this gap being wider in Health Sciences. Finally, some recommendations are offered regarding digital training and the use of VR, derived from the results of this study. © 2023 by the authors.

Use of ICT Tools in Higher Education in Peru during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This paper analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent migration to digital learning environments on the habits of use of digital teaching tools among university professors in Peru. The existence of gender gaps in this impact has also been studied. For this purpose, quantitative analysis of the answers of 116 professors from different Peruvian universities to a questionnaire designed for this purpose was carried out. As a result, it has been obtained that the pandemic has led to an increase in the use of digital tools in all areas of teaching activity studied, mainly in the evaluation and sharing of teaching materials. In addition, although female professors reported a lower use of digital tools before the pandemic, the increase in their use has been greater than in males in all teaching areas. © 2022 IEEE.

Soft Skills of Latin American Engineering Professors: Gender Gap

The importance of soft skills in the professional work of an engineer is becoming increasingly important, even more so since the emergence of Covid-19 boosted the digitization of all professional sectors. In order for future engineers to acquire this type of skills, it is necessary for engineering professors to have an optimal level of technical and transversal skills. This article analyzes the assessment made by a group of engineering professors about their degree of development of soft skills and describes gender gaps in these assessments. Based on a self-created survey to evaluate different families of soft skills relevant to engineering education, a sample of 284 Latin American engineering professors reported: 1) high evaluations of their soft skills and 2) the existence of gender gaps in the families of work behavior and social skills in favor of females. This gap is especially wide among participants younger than 45 and older than 65 in the social skills family. In addition, females also rate their work motivation skills higher, except in the 55–64 age range. IEEE