Digital transformation at high education: are professors of the South European and South American countries prepared for that?

Abstract

The higher education plays a fundamental role in the society transformation in all of its dimensions, namely teaching, educational management, vision and creation of business and professions. The combination of new challenges in higher education with the increase of mobile technologies (one of the digital transformation pillars) leads to an intensification in teaching opportunities and demands of new teaching methods development. Due to this, several concepts from the e_learning, to u_learning appeared. Therefore, it is critical to understand whether users (students and professors) are receptive and aware to adapt to this new paradigm before deciding to implement teaching-learning methods based on mobile technology. In this context, the aim of the study presented is to investigate if higher education professors, in the technology area, in South Europe and South America countries, are using Mobile Learning with gamification and augmented reality apps and how they can be used to promote student’s engagement inside and outside of the classroom, in order to prepare the students for a new reality – the digital transformation.