Higher education teachers in Portugal use technology in their educational activities: Myth or Reality?

Abstract

Technologies are being introduced in our everyday life, including schools and in particular classrooms. Teachers are trying to make the most of web 2.0 tools and social media. However, we are not sure if, in fact, teachers are using these technologies and if when they do, if they do so with pedagogical purposes or to help them to manage the learning process or to replace some obsolete technologies by more modern ones but without learning objectives. To contribute to this question a questionnaire was developed and administered to teachers from higher education. Results show that there is still a long way to go before saying that teachers are fully using and taking the advantages of technologies in the classroom.

Examining the use of e‐assessment in higher education: teachers and students’ viewpoints

“…Despite the fact that the authors found only a few evidences of the use of technology for activities related to student assessment, they consider that some indication exists of exploration of assessment features of technology. Peres, Moreira and Mesquita () arrived at similar conclusions in their research about the use of technology by higher education teachers. The authors demonstrate that teachers are using mainly elementary technology, such as PCs and laptops and that in terms of specific applications, Moodle was the most used.…”

“…By analysing the results, it's possible to perceive that distrust is a significant factor for not adopting e-assessment. Even more considerable is the fact that the teachers think that they do not have the necessary knowledge to practice, as was equally reported in previous studies (Peres, Moreira & Mesquita, 2017), and that they somewhat fear the technical problems that may arise. These findings can perhaps be explained by the reports of existing research on the limited uptake of technology for learning in higher education, that seems to be confined to more elementary tools (Peres, Moreira & Mesquita, 2017;Pombo et al, 2016) that are used of e-assessment only occasionally (Carvalho, Areal & Silva, 2011).…”