Community Student Service Online: The Experience of the ULA

Abstract

Nowadays, the university education is in the middle of a transformation, as an answer to a Knowledge Society emerging from globalization, originated by Information and Communications Technology (ICT's). Backed in those tools with the main objective of achieving a pertinent education to needs of the society, such as flexible in time and space, equitative, without frontiers, new models of teaching; virtual education, interactive distance education, on line education, among others have been included. The present article exhibits the results of a qualitative investigation, which allowed documenting the experience of designing, implementing and developing the first induction courses over the online community service, at the University of Los Andes-Trujillo. A virtual learning environment (VLE) was used, to instruct the students over their functions as community service providers. The study was based on a data narrative design, provided by the participants, and complemented with the observations of the investigator. Finally, the students' efficiency and the performance with reference to the results are shown. Thus, among other things, it was found that a good efficiency was obtained and that the course was assessed in a satisfactory manner, however, some findings are orientated to improve practices in the future.