Digital educational resources supporting higher education students' learning

Abstract

The aim of this work was to assess the importance given to the use of digital educational resources as well as the use frequency of such resources. Data was obtained through a questionnaire conducted within a sample of higher education students. We fleshed out the concept of digital educational resource and presented the results regarding the assessment of the importance of digital educational resources as a support to license degree students' learning. We analyzed aspects associated with learning strategies, motivation, and learning tasks. We concluded that most of the sample subjects gave great importance to all the aspects assessed. Significant differences were found between 1st and 2nd year students regarding the item study individually, as 2nd year students were found to give this item more importance. The use frequency of digital educational resources was analyzed with regard to various resources. The most used, many times or always, by more than half of the sample subjects were search engines, social networks, and video sites. Comparing the results by groups of students, significant differences were found between the groups of 1st year and 2nd year students in the variables online encyclopedias, blogs, scientific repositories, and e-learning platforms. Significant differences were also found between the groups of 2nd and 3rd year students in the social networks variable.