Can the right to education be successfully implemented through new technologies?

Abstract

Since we have been university professors for over thirty years, with thousands of hours of teaching experience and being the expositive method the privileged one for the explanation of the various subjects, we wanted to find out from our 2nd year students, from of the law degree at Portucalense University, which methods they would consider most appropriate in order to instil in them more interest in the presence of the classes and more use in the conclusion of the curricular units. Indeed, in the recent years, we have been finding it more difficult for students to concentrate, subsequently they are more easily distracted and adopt behaviours that disrupt the normal functioning of the classes, namely producing noise, which compromises the intrinsic reflection inherent to the seriousness and importance of the topics covered in the classes. It has also been found that students nowadays tend to read less, often seeking to study by simple summaries and / or notes on the subjects, elaborated by themselves or their peers. For this reason, the presentation of audio-visual media, such as the exhibition of brief documentaries and thematic interviews, has already been taken to the classroom, all related to the subject to be taught or already taught, promoting, then, the critical discussion. Empirically, it has been found that students appreciate this kind of presentation and discussion, which led us to ask them how they evaluate this experience and what, according to them, would be a methodologically interesting class, so as to capture them more interest. We also wanted to know about their reading habits, whether from manuals and other academic bibliographic sources or other kind of literature, as well as their willingness to actively contribute in the classroom context or to adhere to the study-research method and autonomous study with simple tutorial guidance from the teacher. We create an anonymous brief-answers questionnaire so that our students could express themselves as clearly and truthfully as possible. The questionnaire was prepared by us and answered by the students in November 2019. The average age of our students was around 20 years. The results partly coincide with the perception we had already gained from our classroom experience: lectures are considered interesting, audio-visuals very interesting and PowerPoints interesting, contributing to the increased interest of students and their academic achievement; students do not reveal much interest in active participation when learning; students devote little time to reading; students consider the reading of simple summaries and /or notes, elaborated by themselves or their peers, to be sufficient to obtain approval, but nevertheless recognize that reading the manuals is interesting.