Virtual classrooms in face-to-face tertiary education: the student perspective

This article presents the pedagogical analysis of environments, spaces or virtual classrooms. It is a continuation of other previous works by the authors who, for almost a decade, have been checking the process of integration and generalization of the virtual classrooms by the entire faculty of a university offering all of their degrees in face-to-face teaching. In this study, 12 cases of virtual classrooms from different fields or branches of knowledge that were analyzed with a specific observation instrument were selected and twelve group interviews were conducted with the students enrolled in them. It has been found that these environments or virtual classrooms respond to a pedagogical model of expository teaching characterized by being a repository of digital objects that pack knowledge, as it is the resource through which students deliver the tasks or jobs that they demand, and with a low level of social interaction between teachers and students. It concludes with recommendations for the development of institutional policies that stimulate the development of innovative pedagogical models of teaching through technologies