Dra. Badilla-Quintana, María Graciela

The Virtual World is a technology that has created countless opportunities for teaching and learning, innovating traditional and online education, and promoting a more sustainable and accessible education. Through their avatars and digital representations, students can navigate, observe, and manipulate virtual objects, while interacting with their classmates inside the simulated 3D environment. This study examined how preservice teachers experience and participate in a VW that simulates a university campus, considering three main components: interactivity, sense of presence, and state of flow. A total of 103 pedagogy students, enrolled in an educational technology course, participated in the study. A postintervention survey was implemented, as well as a self-report about the immersive experience. The results show a high level of agreement with the survey’s affirmations, which allows for the determination of the favorable levels of interactivity, presence, and flow, as well as the meaningful and positive associations among these technological properties. Guidelines are argued to deepen the Virtual World’s potential and are given for the design of pedagogical activities in those environments.

This study analyzes the psychometric properties of the engagement to academic tasks (Comp-TA) questionnaire. Rigorous criteria were considered in its design and validation, such as theoretical review, expert judgment, pilot test, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. The instrument was administered face-to-face and in remote modality to a convenience sample of 563 high-school students from schools in Concepción, Chile. The analyses showed a latent structure with a good fit to the data, consisting of 15 items that underlie the factors of academic engagement: behavioral, cognitive, and affective. The reliability analysis yielded an internal consistency of.92 according to the ordinal alpha. Guidelines for its use to deepen the educational process of high-school students are argued