Studying in Virtual University: an approach to students’ technopedagogical profiles

This article presents some findings of ongoing investigation on preferences and activities of university students in an emergency remote education context. A qualitative research was developed through the application of two controlled instruments (questionnaires), and a more productive one (recordings of testimonies). The main contribution of this work is the identification of three student profiles based on the strategies they develop to study with technologies in their personal environments. They are known as Gutenberg, Amphibian, and Maker profiles, and some of the main characteristics of their techno-pedagogical practices are described here. The Gutenberg profile defines a group of students whose study practices and preferences are fundamentally linked to analog technologies; the Amphibian profile is defined by the combination of analogical and digital strategies, however, there is an emphasis on the emulation of analog practices. Finally, Maker profiles prefer digital technologies and they are able to recreate teaching resources into new digital objects. The results indicate that students appropriate technologies in a particular and flexible way, which puts in tension the categories native digital and millennial, since preferences and activities seem to show the presence of analogical practices along with other emerging ones.