Resumen

FERNANDEZ, Nelly. Teaching experience in the context of the Venezuelan university crisis. Paradígma [online]. 2014, vol.35, n.1, pp.149-166. ISSN 1011-2251.

In May 2013, the Federation of Venezuelan University Professors Associations called for a indefinite teaching strike; professors and students from Universidad Simón Bolivar responded to the call. In this context, the researcher designs an autonomous on line learning plan (PAAL) in order to assist her students during and after the strike. The purpose of this article is to give account of the plan’s results in several realms. On the one hand, it regards the response of these students to the plan, their participation and perception. On the other hand, it considers their academic achievement, how it relates to their participation and how it contrasts to an equivalent former class (control group, face-to-face). This is a transverse explicative after the fact field research framed in the quantitative approach. Results show, firstly, that the students responded satisfactorily to the PAAL, their involvement’s degree was higher-moderate. Also, the student’s perception about the online learning program was very positive and they qualified it as very useful. Secondly, the relationship between academic achievement and participation in the PAAL was not significant; nonetheless, the experimental group’s academic achievement in the English as a foreign language reading comprehension test, was significantly higher than the control group’s performance. These results suggest that the design of on line learning environments can be a very valuable strategy during a university crisis, and that it can empower freedom, in the sense that it increases the student’s possibilities to achieve what he values, i.e. to perform satisfactory in the tests.

Palabras clave : crisis; English as a foreign language; online learning; academic achievement; freedom.

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