Critical processing of information on university students from personal learning environments

Abstract

Based on the CAPPLE Project (funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness), in this article we identify the strategies and network tools used by 2054 Spanish university senior students to critically process information and manage their learning process. From a non-experimental research design of exploratory type, a validated questionnaire was used through a triple procedure (expert judgment, cognitive interviews and pilot study) to collect data from 75 Spanish universities. The results show that future professionals are aware of the need to contrast and apply critical thinking about the information they receive; grant credibility to the information associated with their training environment; they question the received from external and value the use of learning tools according to the academic assessment they expect to have. Among the pending issues that this work opens is the theoretical and practical in-depth look at the predictive capacity of Personal Learning Environments (PLE): a) as a tool for evaluation and learning in future work performance actions; b) how this performance improves after a solid formation in the critical processing of the information displayed along the undergraduate studies.