Martínez Ruíz, Francisco Javier; Godina Gonzalez; Borrego Elías, Ana Lourdes; Gamboa Rosales, Hamurabi; De la Rosa Vargas, José Ismael
Resumen:
Social networks are becoming a standard way for sharing and collaborating between students and
professors. Currently, our Class Website is not the primary source of information and materials.
Professors are using a combination of these social networks. For instance, some classical LMS
(Learning Management Systems) as Moodle with ludic or general purpose networks as Facebook.
This strategy allows learners to access information in their favorite social network. However, gathering
and processing this information implies a mental effort since there are multiple distractors (e.g.,
notifications and friends’ messages). A survey study asked college students, enrolled in computer
sciences courses, to describe their behavior and perceptions regarding classroom use of social
networks for learning purposes. The study included students of the program of Computer Engineering
at the University of Zacatecas (Mexico). Respondents confirmed partially the hypothesis: Class
Websites immersed in social networks (no academic ones) implied a heavier cognitive load. Learning
tasks completion is affected in consequence. Finally, there is no important difference between using
social networks inside and outside the classroom.