EDUCATION 4.0 FRAMEWORK: ENRICHING ACTIVE LEARNING WITH VIRTUAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL TOOLS

Abstract

At the beginning of 2020, many educators were still unclear what exactly it meant to design teaching-learning processes in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, “Education 4.0”. Despite this, and due to the Corona crisis, all institutions were dizzyingly pushed into partially known digital and technological environments, dragging teachers and students with them. In the field of higher education, the situation was doubly challenging: there were still deep misunderstandings about how to improve the cognitive abilities of Generation Z students, and serious confusion about the fact that technological tools -even advanced- can hardly replace an entire cognitive theory. The present work is a study on the effectiveness of the Active Learning approach in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics); the didactic use of technological tools (including screencasting and podcasting) and, the design of innovative strategies to enhance the development of the skills declared in the Education 4.0 Framework: global citizenship, innovation and creativity, digital literacy and interpersonal awareness. The methodology used was quantitative-experimental with a 4-group Solomon design, involved more than 250 students and was developed over three years, including the two semesters of 2020 (fully online environments). The use of VALUE rubrics (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) allowed the obtaining of conclusive results: (i) the importance of a correct diagnosis of the development of digital literacy skills to promote the formation of metacognitive awareness; (ii) the impact of the design and implementation of adequate cognitive tools in the quality of the learning outcomes; and (iii) the relevance of the dosed use of technological tools in each stage of a 2D learning taxonomy (cognitive process dimension / orthogonal knowledge dimension). Keywords: Critical Thinking, Creativity, Higher Education, Educational Innovation