<p class="AbstractText">This paper presents the findings of a study carried out in the academic year 2014-2015 at the faculty of Education of the University of Murcia with first year degree students in Primary Education studying Research and ICT. The study started with the application of the DIGCOM questionnaire to analyze the digital competences of 134 students. The questionnaire served as an initial task to help students reflect on their digital competences. The subject was developed around tasks which adopted a transversal approach and used the nature of the contents itself to direct and improve students’ digital competencies. Finally, the initial questionnaire was reformulated and run in order to ascertain the students’ self-perception of their improvement in these competencies through the tasks they had performed.</p> <p class="AbstractText">Below we present the tasks carried out, the organization of each subject and the most relevant data regarding the self-perception of digital competencies of the future primary school teachers enrolled at the University of Murcia. The data reveal, on the one hand, that the students participating consider themselves to be competent in the most basic aspects of digital competencies and, on the other, their perception that the work done in the subject has helped them quite a lot in improving their competencies.</p>

This article describes the entire process of validating the data collection instrument of the CAPPLE project. The validation of the instrument (an online survey) aims to ensure the reliability, validity, relevance and functionality of the collection process. Hence, a validation method based on three complementary procedures has been chosen: expert judgement by eight experts in three consecutive rounds; a round of cognitive interviews with 24 subjects on 10 critical items, and a pilot study with 400 invited subjects, of which 224 are considered the final sample. Following the completion of the three methods described, we get an instrument that meets the validation criteria, configured by four basic dimensions (self-perception, information management, management of the learning process and communication) and that could be considered as a very useful tool in the study of Personal Learning Environments of university students.

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Resumen Partiendo del Proyecto CAPPLE (financiado por el Ministerio español de Economía y Competitividad), en este artículo identificamos las estrategias y las herramientas en red utilizadas por 2054 estudiantes universitarios españoles de último curso para efectuar un tratamiento crítico de la información y gestionar su proceso de aprendizaje. Desde un diseño de investigación no experimental de tipo exploratorio, se ha utilizado un cuestionario validado a través de un triple procedimiento (juicio de expertos, entrevistas cognitivas y estudio piloto) para recoger datos de 75 universidades en España. Los resultados muestran que los futuros profesionales son conscientes de la necesidad de contrastar y aplicar un pensamiento crítico sobre la información que reciben; otorgan credibilidad a la información asociada a su ámbito formativo; cuestionan la recibida del exterior y valoran el uso de herramientas de aprendizaje según la valoración académica que esperan tener. Entre los temas pendientes que abre este trabajo se destaca con nitidez la profundización teórica y práctica sobre la capacidad predictiva de los Entornos Personales de Aprendizaje (PLE): a) como herramienta de evaluación y de aprendizaje en futuras acciones de desempeño laboral y; b) en cómo mejora este desempeño tras una sólida formación en el tratamiento crítico de la información desplegada durante los estudios universitarios de grado.

Semantic Web technologies have been applied in educational settings for different purposes in recent years, with the type of application being mainly defined by the way in which knowledge is represented and exploited. The basic technology for knowledge representation in Semantic Web settings is the ontology, which represents a common, shareable and reusable view of a particular application domain. Ontologies can support different activities in educational settings such as organizing course contents, classifying learning objects or assessing learning levels. Consequently, ontologies can become a very useful tool from a pedagogical perspective. This paper focuses on two different experiences where Semantic Web technologies are used in educational settings, the difference between them lying in how knowledge is obtained and represented. On the one hand, the OeLE platform uses ontologies as a support for assessment processes. Such ontologies have to be designed and implemented in semantic languages apt to be used by OeLE. On the other hand, the ENSEMBLE project pursues the development of semantic web applications by creating specific knowledge representations drawn from user needs. Our paper is consequently going to offer an in-depth analysis of the role played by ontologies, showing how they can be used in different ways drawing a comparison between model patterns and examining the ways in which they can complement each other as well as their practical implications