Moodle is one of the most widely used learning management systems currently and has traditionally been studied through the Technology Acceptance Model. Existing literature is scattered and does not allow us to clearly conclude what characteristics this technological acceptance has as well as its main progress. The study aimed to provide an overview of the scientific literature on the application of TAM in the study of the acceptance and technological use of Moodle through a Systematic Mapping Study (SMS). Results from 24 selected studies indicate that the topic is of increasing interest and that the literature is characterized by studies that 1) use extended versions of TAM; 2) are based on university students from different programs; 3) take place in Europe or Asia; 4) are published in journals with different impact factors; and 5) have focused on testing mainly the original TAM hypotheses. Although a lot of hypotheses have been studied (271), only 16 have been accepted more times than rejected by 2 or more studies, with Perceived Ease of Use being the most commonly present construct in the hypotheses. Results imply that although TAM remains as a robust model for studying Moodle there are still important gaps to be addressed.
Teaching computer programming is a real challenge in the State University of Milagro (UNEMI), located in one of the least-developed zones in Ecuador, a non-WEIRD country (WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic). Despite the application of various learning strategies, the historical pass rate does not exceed 43%. To solve this problem, we have relied on visual programming languages, specifically Scratch. Scratch is an open source software to learn programming that has a strong assumption of the benefits of community work. A quasi-experiment conducted with 74 undergraduate students during the first semester of CS showed that: (1) Both groups (control and experimental) are homogeneous in terms of their demographic characteristics, previous academic performance and motivation (expectations) concerning the course; (2) Scratch is strongly accepted by students in the experimental group and concerning the learning process, both groups showed similar levels of satisfaction; (3) the experimental group showed a pass rate four times higher than the control group; (4) in general, student success is associated with having learned programming with Scratch. While limited, our results are an important step in our road to improve the learning of programming in a low social status area of Ecuador.
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