This paper analyzes the assessment of engineering professors of different nationalities and universities regarding the use of virtual reality (VR) technologies in the classroom. In particular, the existence of gaps in these evaluations by ownership (private or public) of the university where each professor teaches is analyzed, both within the complete sample of participants and within the subsets formed when they are differentiated by gender, age, and time of teaching experience. For this purpose, a questionnaire has been designed and validated with 22 inquiries that have been dispersed in six scales, corresponding to six different dimensions that affect the didactic use of VR. The questionnaire has been distributed to a set of 279 university professors from different Engineering schools and countries. The results, which have been analyzed quantitatively, both descriptive and inferential, indicate that engineering teachers give high evaluations to VR as a didactic tool, but show a certain lack of knowledge and specific training regarding its use. Furthermore, there is a gap between private and public universities, where private university professors express overall higher evaluations of VR than public university professors.

This paper studies the perception of Latin American university teachers about the effectiveness of digital content creation (DCC) tools for the creation of e-learning training actions. For this purpose, the opinions of a group of 564 teachers from different universities in 16 Latin American countries have been collected and their answers have been analyzed according to different sociological and academic characteristics (gender, age, teaching experience, area of knowledge, and academic degree). The results indicate that Latin American university teachers express high levels of digital training and highly value the didactic effectiveness of DCC tools to develop e-learning training actions. This valuation is significantly higher among females than males. Gender is also revealed as the most influential characteristic in the perception of teachers about the use of digital resources in the classroom, above any other aspect.

This paper conducts quantitative research on the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the adaptation to digital learning environments (DLE) of a group of 908 university professors. We compared the perceptions of participants who were digital natives (born before 1980) with those of digital immigrants (born after 1980). For this purpose, a validated survey was used and the obtained responses statistically analyzed. The results show a negative correlation between pandemic stress and the digital competence of professors and their adaptation skills to digital environments, which although weak for both of the two groups compared are stronger for digital immigrants. Both self-confidence and digital competence show a positive influence on the perception of adaptation of skills to DLE, and this is weaker in digital natives. Gaps were identified by gender and area of knowledge of the participants; consequently, the need to carry out training actions for university faculty on skills linked to their digital competence in teaching is clear.

The lockdown of March and April 2020 as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced relevant changes in the educational environment in a very short period of time, making it necessary to suspend in-person instruction and generating the need to implement virtual learning mechanisms. In a future post-COVID-19 hybrid educational model, it will be necessary for university teachers to acquire an optimal degree of digital competence, as a combination of different competencies, namely, (i) technical, (ii) digital, and (iii) soft. Soft skills have been shown to have a decisive influence on the development of digital competence. The aim of this study was to analyze the degree of acquisition of soft skills in Latin American university teachers whose countries are less digitally developed. For this purpose, the countries with the lowest Global Innovation Index (GII) were selected: (i) Panama; (ii) Peru; (iii) Argentina; (iv) El Salvador; (v) Ecuador; (vi) Paraguay; (vii) Honduras; and (viii) Bolivia. To achieve this objective, it was necessary to develop a questionnaire on the self-concept of soft skills, based on the soft skills included in the Bochum Inventory of Personality and Competences (BIP). Results obtained from statistical analysis of the data collected from a sample of 219 participants show that university teachers are sufficiently prepared, in terms of their soft skills, for the increase in digital competence required as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, despite the low level of digital development in their respective countries.

In this paper, quantitative, descriptive, and correlational research is carried out on the impact that the process of digitalization of academic activities in higher education has had on the habits of use of information and communication technologies (ICT) among professors and the influence of the area of knowledge on this impact. For this purpose, responses from 716 professors from different Latin American universities to a survey designed by the authors were statistically analyzed. Following the UNESCO guide on the use of ICT in higher education, the survey distinguishes the following teaching activities to measure the use of ICT: lessons, tutorials, sharing materials, and evaluation. The results show that the use of ICT has increased in all teaching activities, but unevenly, being particularly intense in those in which the use of ICT was less frequent during the pandemic—specifically, tutorials and evaluation, whose frequency of use has increased by around 50%. As a result of this uneven increase, the use of ICTs in different teaching activities has become more homogeneous after the pandemic. This increase was significantly higher among engineering and social sciences professors than in other areas of knowledge, as well as in evaluation and tutorial tools than in other activities. In addition, the ICT tools most used during the pandemic were those with which the professors or students were most familiar before the pandemic. It is recommended that universities increase the specific training of professors in the pedagogical use of ICT and that they should address the specificities of each area of knowledge.