SPONTANEOUS INTERACTIONS IN A VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT THROUGH MOBILE DEVICES: A MAPPING BASED ON THE ANALYSIS OF SYSTEM ACCESS RECORDS

Abstract

The current technological context has favored the development of an educational modality that has been called m-learning (or mobile learning), which is the educational use of mobile and portable devices in teaching and learning activities. Aligned with this theme, this paper presents the spontaneous use that higher education students have performed to access the Learning Management Systems (LMS) through their devices. From the accesses records of the LMS of a higher education institution, over a period of five years, the usage profile of the students was mapped describing their use through mobile devices. It were identified important features as the number of accesses, time spent in the system and some attributes of the mobile technologies adopted by the students. The results point to the increased interest by students, to a heterogeneous and complex technological environment that requires careful adaptation of LMSs to favor the incorporation of mobile technologies in the learning mediation.