Comparison of the use of personal learning environments (PLE) between students from Chile and Ecuador

Resumen

The presence of Information Technology and Communication (ITC) in education has ensured new learning environments, such as virtual classrooms present today in most universities, the distance education (online) and the complement classroom education whose duality is known as B-Learning. This is the case of the National University of Chimborazo, Public Higher Education Institution of the Ecuador and Metropolitan University of Science of Education of the Chile, which five years ago has begun to gradually integrate these new computing learning's resources. The present study investigates the use of virtual classrooms, as tools constitute student's Personal Learning Environments (PLE) in Chile and Ecuador, the differences, similarities and characteristics. The main results, there is an increasing the number of subjects that support virtual classrooms for classroom teaching, but learning occurs both in and out of these new learning environments, thus, Web 2.0 tools are important in these processes either to access, process, publish and share resources and content. Finally, as to whether there are differences in the contexts of using of PLE among students in Chile and Ecuador, there are no major differences except for some particular parameters pertaining to the creation of content modules in each country.