Abstract:

In Spain, low motivation is one of the reasons freshman students allege to explain their dropping out from higher education degrees. Hence, this study analyses the impact of different educational resources and tools supported by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on the motivation of students in the freshman year of three Bachelor´s Degrees in the University of the Basque Country. With such aim, interactive activities were implemented in two undergraduate courses: Natural Sciences in Primary Education I (NSPEI) of the ‘Bachelor´s Degree in Primary Education’; and Chemistry (CH), of both ‘Bachelor´s Degree in Marine Studies’ and ‘Bachelor’s Degree in Nautical Studies and Maritime Transport’. Motivation has been modelled according to: the importance a person awards to an activity, the expectations put on it, the belief of the usefulness of the result and the fast reward in the response. The sorting in tool valuations reported in the final questionnaire by NSEPI students generally met the order in the motivation values predicted by the Vroom model. Regarding the final questionnaire, in general, students believe that ICTs are essential, but that they do not replace traditional educational resources. It is remarkable that NSEPI students have a better perception than CH students of ICT tools, probably because they will most certainly implement them in their professional future activity.

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