This research area investigates the various teaching and learning processes that take place in online environments as well as their effects on learner outcomes. Research issues such as how to tailor and fine-tune online teaching to learners’ needs, how learners culturally appropriate knowledge, and the effects of instruction on learners’ performance. Interaction and communication in formal and informal learning scenarios would be the core mechanisms for analysis throughout all kinds of ICT technologies. The results of the teaching and learning processes will search for adaptable decisions and actions that make these processes reliable. The three main areas of research are (but not limited): 1) instructional design of online tasks, materials and tools, 2) e-assessment methods and the provision of effective feedback 3) learning support and efficient student patterns and profiles.
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Thesis Proposals |
Researchers |
Research group |
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Characteristics and nature of feedback and its impact on students' learning
This research line explores the following topics, with a focus on online learning environments or technology-enhanced learning:
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Dr Rosa Mayordomo
Dr Teresa Guasch
Dr Anna Espasa |
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Research in techonology-enhanced second language teaching and learning This research line focuses on second language teaching and learning in blended and virtual environments. Technologies that support language learning are necessary, but they should go hand-in-hand with pedagogical and psycholinguistic considerations. This line of research investigates the effectiveness of different pedagogical interventions on second language learning. Research topics include, but are not limited to:
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Dr Laia Canals
Dr Gisela Grañena
Dr Aleksandra Malicka |
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Second language acquisition outcomes in computer-assisted language learning environaments There are increasingly more technologies that support computer-assisted language learning. While these are necessary developments, there is a need for technological options that go hand-in-hand with pedagogical and psycholinguistic considerations. This line of research investigates the effectiveness of different pedagogical interventions on L2 learning in computer-assisted language environments. For example, task design, types of corrective feedback, and instructional methods. The ultimate goal is to identify those variables that have the greatest impacts on L2 learning in computer-assisted language learning environments. |
Dr Gisela Grañena |
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Second language learning and online communication
PhD Research proposals are welcome in any of the following topics:
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Dr Christine Appel |
realTIC-UOC |
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Integrating insights from educational neuroscience, socio-emotional learning and imaginative pedagogies as well as news technologies, such as machine learning, big data or affective chatbots, to support new ways of teaching and learning
This research will investigate the following large-scale research topics (which can be independent PhD topics):
1. The relationship of educational neuroscience with socio-emotional learning, especially emotional intelligence.
2. The relationship of virtual or human teacher cognitive and affective feedback with neurotransmitters and students’ motivation and attention.
3. The development of an intelligent and affective-aware CSCL environment that orchestrates students' interactions and engagement in an effective manner, taking into consideration different affective states.
4. The analysis and interpretation of the relationship between emotion awareness and educational neuroscience, identifying what neurotransmitters have a strong relationship with the emotions that students experience during their online learning processes (conversations, debates, wikis) in context.
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Dr Atanasi Daradoumis
Dr Marta Arguedas |
SMARTLEARN |
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Learning Analytics for action: Intervention design and analysis in programming and math courses
This research line uses data analysis to design an intervention at course level and find a relationship between that and improved retention or student performance and satisfaction. We also analyse the influence of the educational personal feedback in the learning process and the relevance, for instance, of the emotional factors in this process. This analysis also includes the study of appropriate personalised feedback tools to formative assessment, specifically in the context of learning by competence like rubrics and portfolios, among others.
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Dr Teresa Sancho-Vinuesa
Dr María Jesús Marco-Galindo |
LAIKA Research Group |
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Multilevel analysis of student trajectories in STEM grades: relationships between core subjects, academic results, mentorship, dropout and re-enrollment
Students enrolled in STEM degrees (like Computer Science or Data Science) have to overcome a number of obstacles in the form of core courses during their first semesters, such as math or programming courses. Knowing how students progress in each course in which they are enrolled and the mentoring actions, their academic results and their relationship to dropping out or re-enrollment the next semester, is important to understand which factors contribute to their long-term success. Our goal is to address some well-known problems of online/distance students, such as difficulties in following the planned schedule of activities, learning abstract concepts, how to measure the difficulty of each activity / subject, the impact of the received feedback in their academic results, and the relationship between such results, their enrollment and dropout, among others. In order to do so, we will combine available data from thousands of students taking STEM degrees with questionnaires and interviews, following a learning analytics approach, using multilevel analysis and other advanced statistical and data mining techniques.
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Dr Teresa Sancho-Vinuesa
Dr María Jesús Marco-Galindo
Dr Julià Minguillón Alfonso
Dr David García-Solórzano
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LAIKA Research Group |
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Analysing students’ success and failure: Incorporation, retention, and graduation at the UOC
This research line is focused on examining the experiences of undergraduate and postgraduate students in a fully online higher education institution such as the UOC. Drawing on the team’s expertise in designing and assessing educational innovations, the research carried out by the PhD student will contribute to a better understanding of the factors affecting the satisfaction of students enroled in higher education programs. Among others, these factors include: their enrolment patterns, the support received from their academic tutors, their strategies for persistence and the support they receive to avoid dropout, and the improvement of their employment opportunities after graduation.
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Dr Julio Meneses
Dr Sergi Fàbregues Feijó
Dr Ariadna Angulo Brunet |
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Learners' identity, agency and learning engagement in blended and online environments
This research proposal is focused on analysing students' learning engagement in relation to their identity and agency development as learners in online and blended environments. We conceive agency and identity as dynamic and socioculturally mediated dispositions through which students build their learning pathways across different environments.
We propose dialogical and reflective learning approaches, including student participation in learning co-design via digital technologies, as means of encouraging students' learning engagement, as well as their identity and agency development by gradually taking control and direction of their own learning.
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Dr Iolanda García González |
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Learning personalization
The proposed research line focuses on personalizing learning actions based on learners' individual characteristics. This line includes the following topics:
Synchronous, asynchronous and hybrid methodologies
Active learning methodologies
Feedback and learning support
Competency-based programme design
Competence and knowledge assessment methodologies
Formal and informal methodologies
Connection between learning methodologies, skills achievement and the skills-labour market relationship
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Coordinator
Mail: mmartinezarg@uoc.edu
Mail: eserradell@uoc.edu
Mail: rferreras@uoc.edu
Mail: afitob@uoc.edu
Mail: aelasri@uoc.edu
Mail: cpagesserra@uoc.edu
Mail: cplag@uoc.edu
Mail: mpujoljo@uoc.edu
Dr Jordi Sales-Zaguirre
Mail: jsales@uoc.edu
Dr David Roman Coy
Mail: droman@eada.edu
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Teacher Professional Development in the Digital Era
Beginning from the development of a competency based framework, strategic and training-focused for teaching in blended and online scenarios. We propose strategies and actions that support teacher professional development in the use and application of digital technologies in the context of life-long learning. As well as incorporating tools (learning analytics) for the improvement of teaching (focus: teacher).
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Mail: mguitert@uoc.edu
Mail: ncabrera@uoc.edu
Mail: lguardia@uoc.edu
Mail: mmaina@uoc.edu
Mail: mromerocar@uoc.edu
Mail: tromeu@uoc.edu
Mail: asangra@uoc.edu
Dr Josep M. Mominó
Mail: jmomino@uoc.edu |
Edul@b |
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Teacher identity development in online learning scenarios
This research proposal aims to study primary and secondary school teacher identity development in teacher learning processes in the context of initial and continuing (online) education, thus mostly using virtual learning environments.
The purpose is to promote adequate, healthy professional identities among student-teachers through the design of learning scenarios mediated by digital technologies and based on practices such as self-reflection, the construction of narratives and dialogic practice.
Some other key topics related to this proposal are teacher professionalism, teacher agency and teacher as inquirer.
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Mail: abadia@uoc.edu
Mail: lbecerril@uoc.edu
Mail: igarciago@uoc.edu
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SINTE (Antoni Badia i Lorena Becerril) |
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The effect of education with programmable robots on preschoolers’ socio-emotional development and problem solving skills
The project aims to investigate convergent thinking and the role of executive functions in the learning process when programming robots in childhood.
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Mail: lcrescenzi@uoc.edu
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Child Tech Lab |
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Collaborative online learning activities in early childhood and primary education This project supports innovation in teaching and learning processes by identifying the potential and possible limits of collaborative online international learning (COIL) in early childhood education. It also aims to investigate convergent thinking and the role of executive functions in the learning process when programming robots in early childhood education settings using traditional vs. COIL classroom teaching methods. We are interested in exploring the effect of education using programmable robots on preschoolers' problem-solving skills. |
Mail: lcrescenzi@uoc.edu
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Child Tech Lab |
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Teaching ownership in digital environments This research line is linked to the use of technology for training in ownership teaching in digital environments. The research will identify and analyse key factors to be taken into account in the ownership of the teaching process, structuring self-directed teacher learning within the framework of a metacognitive use of technologies. |
Dr Elena Barberà |