The teaching and learning processes are basically communicative acts in which students or groups, guided by teachers, carry out various cognitive processes with the information they receive or must search for previously acquired knowledge. Well, the enormous educational potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is that it can support these processes by providing all kinds of information, computer programs for data processing, and synchronous and asynchronous communication channels through the Internet. global in scope.
With the integration of ICT in university centers (intranet, digital whiteboards in classrooms, multipurpose rooms…), new windows are opened to the world that allow students and teachers access to any necessary information at any time, communication with colleagues and colleagues from around the globe to exchange ideas and materials, to work together.
A new paradigm of much more personalized teaching appears, centered on the student, without forgetting the other contents of the curriculum, assuring students the ICT skills that society demands and others as important as curiosity and learning to learn, initiative and responsibility, in addition to teamwork.
The objectives and tasks proposed by an organization, a project, a new task, must be specified in measurable expressions, which serve to quantitatively express said objectives and tasks, and the "Indicators" are in charge of this specification.
The Ministry of Higher Education (MES) has drawn up indicators to guarantee the efficient use of computer resources.
They will allow: Measure changes over time. They make it easy to look closely at the results of initiatives or actions. Use them as instruments to evaluate and give rise to the development process.
Use them as valuable tools to guide us on how to achieve better results.
The ICT Indicators aim to measure the efficiency of their use. This operation also creates a common framework for the production of statistics on the use of these ICTs.
The determination of indicators makes it possible to establish information systems at the respective level at which they are formulated, that is, in this case, information systems to measure the efficiency of the use of ICT in the Municipal University Venues.
By implementing the set of indicators, useful information on the use of ICTs will be obtained to verify their efficient use, in order to take respective measures at the appropriate time.
By putting the indicators into use, information of a different nature will be obtained, such as:
- Alarm: Warns of a situation out of control, to take corrective action. Control: Shows the behavior of one or more variables to maintain the conditions, or make adjustments based on desired patterns.
In all the above, after an initial analysis, the general objective of this work is to expose the importance of the use of indicators that allow validating the efficiency in the use of information and communication technologies in university centers.
Development
The Information Society (IS) is based on the so-called Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), which have had a spectacular development in the last half of the 20th century.
The key facts that have guided this process in microelectronics have been the invention of the transistor in 1947, that of the integrated circuit in 1957 and that of the microprocessor (an entire processor on a chip) in 1971.
Personal computers already existed around 1975, but it was in 1981 that computing became available to individuals, when IBM created the personal computer.
The use of these new tools is being carried out at all educational levels, both in regulated education - primary
The characteristics and attributes of a good measurement are:
Relevance: With this we want to refer to the fact that the measurements we make must be taken into account and have importance in the decisions that are made on the basis of it.
- Precision:
With this term we refer to the degree to which the measurement obtained faithfully reflects the magnitude that we want to analyze or corroborate, we are interested in knowing a process, making decisions to achieve expected results. Hence, then, we are interested in knowing in depth the precision of the data that we are obtaining.
- Opportunity:
The need to have opportunities with the information processed in the most appropriate way that measurements give us, is a requirement that those who design a measurement system must adhere to.
- Reliability:
Although this characteristic is not unrelated to the previous ones, especially precision, it refers fundamentally to the fact that measurement in the company is not an act that is done only once, on the contrary it is a repetitive act and of a truly periodic.
- Economy:
Here the economic justification is simple and complex at the same time. Simple, because we refer to the proportionality that must exist between the costs incurred between the measurement of a certain characteristic or facts and the benefits and relevance of the decision that we support with the data obtained.
But quantifying this proportionality is not easy in many cases, due to the complexity of quantifying the importance and relevance of decisions.
In any case, it is clear that the measurement activity must also comply with the criteria of efficacy, efficiency and effectiveness.
Most of the sources that produce indicators for IS come from national and international organizations fundamentally concerned with macroeconomics and technology, and that the sources that produce or diffuse indicators in the areas of education, science and culture are comparatively relegated.
The diffusion of ICT in education tends to be measured by indicators such as the number of schools connected to the Internet, the number of computers per school, etc., and not the type or intensity of use that students make of IS tools, the possible improvements in school performance associated with ICT, or the relationship between education and the Science and Technology sector.
Consequently, it is necessary to build and introduce more appropriate indicators to measure the progress of the information and knowledge society.
In this type of society, the main thing is human resources, and the knowledge networks formed by them, much more than the hardware and software, and the services that derive from them.
It is essential to investigate the qualification and effective capacities of these human resources and these networks in the electronic space.
Since the spread of the Internet in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The education sector, rich in indicators on education at all levels, is not so rich in terms of the education / ICT interface. The cultural sector (Ministries of Culture, museums, libraries, citizen services, etc.) produces few indicators that allow measuring cultural activities - and that, only in three of the LAC countries - and has not produced, according to It is clear from our study, indicators of culture, nor of "society", in the Information Society.
For their part, national S&T institutions host and produce programs and projects as a priority, which most of the time –except in countries like Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay or Mexico- are not translated into indicators that allow them to be monitored.
This approach markedly tending to a mercantilist perception of the IS, on the part of the majority of indicator producers, explains the biased nature of the information obtained to date.
The study allows us to perceive that the state of the statistical analysis of the issue at hand is still embryonic in the world in general, and in LAC in particular.
To different visions of the present and the future correspond methodologies –and, consequently, sets of divergent indicators.
Efficiency
The authors define efficiency as: Ability to produce results using the maximum available resources. It is based on the real conditions that exist to obtain the best results in the use of ICT in each education center.
Systemic approach.
Systems Theory proposes that a set of indicators can behave as a large system and in which each independent indicator appears as a subsystem.
It behaves as a useful work tool, which has proven its effectiveness on several occasions, allowing the application of different models for different problems.
This is possible because the parts do not function as independent or isolated units, but rather all act oriented towards a single and common goal.
It is necessary that each of the parts works correctly to guarantee its proper functioning.
Feedback is another integrating entity within the system so that it works harmoniously.
Through it, it is possible to diagnose how this system works, in addition to allowing its flexibility according to the external and internal changes that may occur within it.
The indicators must be interrelated, thus guaranteeing that by activating one of them automatically the remaining ones are also involved and respond positively to said action.
Objectivity
Objectivity is the value of seeing the world as it is, and not as we want it to be.
Human beings are a complex mixture of feelings, reasoning, experience and learning. All these elements can give a person a perception of reality that may be wrong.
Being objective is an important challenge, because it requires us to see problems and situations with an approach that adequately balances emotion and reasoning.
One of the most efficient ways to live the value of objectivity is by looking at problems and situations from all points of view, you have to focus on the facts, not the people.
Do not rush into judgments, who is objective reasons, observes, listens and concludes based on information.
Therefore, in the present work it is proposed that an indicator will be objective when it is capable of measuring whatever parameter it is, as it really is. Being more specific, I propose that indicators that are not really or objectively within reach of the real conditions of educational centers should not be used.
The Universalization of Knowledge
… Entering the XXI century, in which information and knowledge have become the main economic resource, of course, used to deepen the differences in a unipolar world, Cuba has once again executed the exceptional note, by locating higher education centers in each of its municipalities, thus taking another solid step in the search for higher levels of equity and social justice from the field of academic training. No one could have imagined such a situation before '59, when an elitist university (three centers throughout the country) reproduced, by quasi divine design, the intellectual and, therefore, socio-political control of a few, over the broad masses of workers and workers. peasants steeped in ignorance.
The concept of Universalization of Higher Education acquires an exact semantic dimension, not only because of the massive nature of this process, but also because it is aimed at the development of a comprehensive general culture that carries revolutionary ideological, pedagogical and human principles.
Universalization constitutes per se its main lesson, beyond the imperfections of work that this young program will have to correct along the way.
The University has social tasks to fulfill to achieve the improvement of the society where it is inserted. It is the knowledge management engine par excellence and a key link within the information and knowledge society.
Universities enter the 21st century with new goals and objectives, but such convulsive moments and the unjust neoliberal economic order imposed by the empire in which the world lives, affects the projection and work of the universities.
Many are the scourges that plague humanity, hunger and poverty only allow us to think about the subsistence of man, which every day becomes more unbearable.
However, although there are overwhelming realities, academic spaces grow in correspondence with the needs of social development. Universities guide and guide the scientific production and culture of nations, hence the linking of both with a humanistic approach, is one of the main contributions of the university.
The present that we live convinces us that the production of knowledge tends to expand and diversify, and that in such a way, the university will continue to frame its development on a structure that facilitates the increasing interconnection with society.
The University of the XXI century is a model of the information and knowledge industry that is obliged to assume a new paradigm to guarantee new social commitments such as continuous learning.
It is important to consider within the substantive changes that have occurred in universities, the growing presence of distance studies and the need to also ensure this modality, where the ways of creating or serving users change, just as their interests change. and cultural and academic preparation.
This emerging information society, driven by a vertiginous scientific advance in a neoliberal-globalizing socio-economic framework and supported by the widespread use of powerful and versatile information and communication technologies (ICT), involves changes that reach all areas of human activity. Its effects are manifested in a very special way in work activities and in the educational world, where everything must be reviewed: from the reason for being of the school and other educational institutions, to the basic training that people need, the way of teaching and learning, the infrastructures and the means we use for it, the organizational structure of the centers and their culture…
From this last scenario, Escudero (1995) within the framework of school restructuring currents affirms that in the face of changes caused by the information society, it is necessary for the school to respond in a reasoned way, with efficiency, control and decentralization. It calls for a systemic change that affects the entire school system because it no longer responds to the demands of today's society, and considers that new technologies must play a key role in this transformation.
However, it underlines that restructuring must take place from values of democratization and through the creation of social and community spaces in which dialogue, interpretation, criticism, reflection take place, prioritizing the perspective of innovation but considering the dangers of a primacy of the values of technological culture, and therefore promoting "from within the technology itself a movement of opposition and resistance, a paradigm shift of a more human, cultural, anthropological and emancipatory bearing in response to the techno-scientist" that has previously mastered.
Conclusions:
The determination of indicators makes it possible to establish information systems at the respective level at which they are formulated, that is, in this case, information systems to measure the efficiency of the use of ICT in the Municipal University Venues.
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