Assessing the individual acquisition of teamwork competence by exploring students’ instant messaging tools use: the WhatsApp case study

Abstract

Nowadays, working in groups is very usual and popular in most professional environments. Thus students, as potential workers, need to acquire teamwork competence in their educational institutions. However, when the students are working in groups, it is easy assessing their final result but not so much evaluating how each of them, individually, is developing teamwork competence. In this sense, there are several methodologies, and those with better results are the ones that explore students' interactions in learning platforms when developing the activity/project. Taking into account the latter, students' interactions do not only happen in a learning platform but also using other tools such as instant messaging tools. This paper explores the possibility to assess the use of instant messaging tools for the acquisition of teamwork competence, and specifically, it presents a case study about the use of WhatsApp. From the results, we can conclude that the students prefer to use Instant Messaging Tools in teamwork activities than other interaction tools as forums; and that the employment of those tools has a positive impact in students' grades.

The Effects of WhatsApp and Telegram on Student Engagement: An Analysis from the Mixed-Methods Approach

“…Similar results are observed in the educational use of Telegram [15,16] allowing the promotion of interaction and interactivity and, consequently, student engagement. e main functionalities employed were chatbots, chat groups, channels, and video calls [10].…”

“…Finally, the students in the sample are professionals from different areas: first edition: Computer Engineers (16), Graduates in Computer Science (5), and Graduates in Computer Education (9). Second edition: Computer Engineers (24) and Graduates in Computer Science (6).…”

Influencia del uso de WhatsApp y correo electrónico en la competencia digital en el área de comunicación

“…En el ámbito de estudio de la comunicación online existen evidencias del benefi cio de la utilización de mensajería instantánea sobre el aprendizaje (Almogheerah, 2020), la interacción y la comunicación en el contexto educativo ( Alubthane y AL-Youssef, 2021), la motivación de logro y la inteligencia social (Alshaibani y Qusti, 2020), o el rendimiento académico (Conde et al, 2020); pero también de su escaso valor educativo (Abualrob y Nazzal, 2020;García-Gómez, 2020). Los resultados obtenidos en nuestro trabajo permiten concluir que tanto el uso de WhatsApp como el del correo electrónico no mejoran, en general, el nivel competencial de comunicación digital, aunque sí lo hacen en algunas áreas competenciales.…”

“…En algunos trabajos se señala que WhatsApp facilita el aprendizaje y mejora las interacciones, los debates, la colaboración y la comunicación entre los estudiantes (Alubthane y ALYoussef, 2021;Coleman y O´Connor, 2019;El Rouadi y Anouti, 2021;Rani, Kalli y Aishatu, 2021;Rodríguez-Valerio, 2020); además de promover su compromiso y participación en el aula (Pereira, Nascimento, Duarte, Pacheco y Brandão, 2021). También desarrolla habilidades comunicativas orales y escritas, fomenta conceptos de alto nivel (Alshaibani y Qusti, 2020; Escobar-Mamani y Gómez-Arteta, 2020) y su empleo tiene un impacto positivo en el rendimiento académico (Cetinkaya, 2017;Conde, Rodríguez-Sedano, Rodríguez-Lera, Gutiérrez-Fernández y Guerrero-Higueras, 2020). Incluso hay investigaciones que han concluido que WhatsApp es mejor que otras plataformas para apoyar procesos de formación en línea (Susilowati, 2021); son muchos los estudiantes universitarios que la utilizan para asuntos académicos (Fondevila Gascón, Mir Bernal y Polo López, 2018).…”

Impact of Transparency in the Teamwork Development through Cloud Computing

“…This layer's aim is to examine the evidence gathered in the previous layer in order to monitor learning and identify the most common errors. The use of the Flipped Classroom method in an online environment produces group evidence, and teamwork in an online environment allows for access to individual evidence in collaborative production [46].…”