Dra. Sáez-Delgado, Fabiola

Dropping out of university studies is one of the current problems of Higher Education; the increased rates during the first year of the study programme is considerable around the world. Dropping out has negative social implications that are reflected at the personal, family, institutional, and educational levels. The aim of this study was to evaluate a predictive model considering the mediation of university social satisfaction and perceived academic performance within the relations between perceived social support, social self-efficacy and academic purposes with career satisfaction and dropout intention in Chilean university students. A non-experimental explanatory design of latent and observed variables was used. Structural equation analyses with Mplus software were performed. The sample consisted of 956 first year university students. The study complied with the ethical requirements for research with human subjects. As a result, a predictive model with adequate adjustment indexes was obtained. When evaluating the explanatory capacity through the coefficient of determination (R2), it was observed that it explains 38.9 and 27.4% of the variance of the dropout intention and career satisfaction, respectively. This percentage of explanation indicates a large effect size in Social Sciences; therefore, they are considered adequate predictive models. The mediation of university social satisfaction on the relationships between social support, social self-efficacy, and academic purposes with academic adjustment and dropout intention was, respectively, confirmed. The perception of academic performance has less influence on dropout intention and on career satisfaction among first-year students. The model obtained allows explaining the dropout intention and career satisfaction in first year students. In addition, it is composed of variables that can potentially be modified in the interaction of students and professors.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students worldwide have continued their education remotely. One of the challenges of this modality is that students need access to devices such as laptops and smartphones. Among these options, smartphones are the most accessible because of their lower price. This study analyzes the usage patterns of smartphone users of undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) students during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-sectional descriptive study included 365 students: 162 (44.4%) women and 203 (55.6%) men from a Chilean university. The results revealed that students often accessed the learning management system (LMS) with their computers rather than with their smartphones. Students were connected to the LMS for more hours on their computers than on their smartphones. However, they spent more hours simultaneously connected on their computers and smartphones than just on their computers. During the day, students accessed the LMS mainly from 13:00 to 1:00. The number of connections decreased from 1:00 to 8:00 and increased from 8:00 to 13:00. The LMS resource that students accessed the most using smartphones was discussion forums, while the one they accessed the least was wiki pages. We expect these results to motivate faculties to schedule their activities during the hours students tend to be online and promote discussion forums.

Due to the closure of universities worldwide because of the COVID-19 pandemic, teaching methods were suddenly transformed to an emergency remote teaching (ERT) modality. Due to the practical nature of STEM courses, students cannot participate in activities in which manipulating objects is necessary for accomplishing learning objectives. In this study, we analyze the relation among STEM students learning beliefs at the beginning of ERT (T1) with their Learning Management systems (LMS) time-on-task and their final academic performance (T2) during the first semester of ERT. We used a prospective longitudinal design. 2063 students (32.3% females) from a university in Chile participated, where the academic year starts in March and finishes in December 2020. We assessed their learning and performance beliefs through an online questionnaire answered at the beginning of the academic period (T1). Then, using learning analytics, time invested in the CANVAS LMS and the academic performance achieved by students at the end of the semester (T2) were assessed. The results show that students mainly stated negative beliefs about learning opportunities during ERT (n = 1,396; 67.7%). In addition, 48.5% (n = 1,000) of students stated beliefs of “medium” academic performance for the first semester (T1). Students with lower learning beliefs at T1 spent less time in the LMS during the semester and had a lower academic performance at T2 than students who had higher learning beliefs at T1. The implications of these findings on the role of instructors and institutions of higher education are discussed.