The European Higher Education Area and today's society, demand people trained at a cognitive, affective and emotional level, with extensive knowledge of Information and Communication Technologies that allow their comprehensive training to be able to adequately develop new tasks demanded by public and private institutions.
In the same way, the educational curriculum and the European Institutions seek greater knowledge on the part of the teaching staff, to carry out their teaching work, but the time and space disabilities often limit the possibility of being able to train.
Therefore, online training is considered an appropriate option for teachers to be trained through an educational model that encourages their autonomy and allows them to decide where, when and how to learn. However, it must be understood that all people are different and this training must be adapted to the needs of each of the participants.
Many Universities in Spain develop their training offer through this model. The University of Extremadura is adapting to this training modality by proposing a variety of postgraduate studies, such as the University Master's Degree in Research in Teacher Training and ICT, which has evolved from being offered in a blended way to being carried out online.
Faced with this situation, the research problem was raised: "Does a change occur in the attitude, knowledge and use of ICT resources, emotions, learning styles and the structure of knowledge acquired in the development of a Master in a modality? distance? ”, whose answer will allow the general research objective to be fulfilled: Observe if there is an evolution in the attitude, knowledge and use of ICT resources, the emotions in front of the elements of the virtual platform, of the emotions in front of the performance of the tasks offered by the teaching staff, the specific emotions in front of the tasks of the platform and the fundamental contents of the Master according to the gender, age and learning styles of the students.
The thesis has been developed in two phases: In the first, a pilot study was carried out that allowed us to approach the behavior of the variables and the reality of the Master. In the second phase, the definitive study was carried out, which gave an answer to the question and the research objectives.
A mixed concurrent triangulation design was used, in which a single-group pretest and posttest design was used for the quantitative design and the content analysis technique was used for the qualitative design, supported by the Theory of Nuclear Concepts. and the Pathfinder Associative Networks. Both designs are executed in parallel to carry out a methodological triangulation in the conclusions stage, contrasting and complementing the results obtained in both designs.
The sample used was the Master's degree students, the class of 2017/2018 for the pilot study and 2018/2019 for the definitive study.
Among the main conclusions obtained, it is highlighted that there is no significant change in attitude, knowledge, use of ICT resources and emotions in students with the development of the Master. However, a significant improvement in knowledge of ICT resources has been observed in the pragmatic learning style with the development of the Master.
On the other hand, a positive and significant correlation has been obtained between knowledge and the use of ICT resources, both at the beginning and at the end of the Master, and a positive and significant correlation between emotions versus the elements of the virtual platform and emotion specific to the activities of the platform, both in the pilot study and in the pretest and posttest of the definitive study.
No statistically significant differences have been observed in these aspects based on gender and age, which helps to verify that the digital and emotional gap is being mitigated in the variables analyzed.
The students have developed their learning towards research, preferably carrying out collaborative activities and have used ICT preferably to search for information, improving their knowledge in databases with the development of the Master. They have also used them for communication, since they consider that they are an indispensable piece for the development of the Master. A regression was observed in the initial consideration that a fundamental activity to develop in the Master to improve the critical sense of the students was the holding of debates.
At the beginning, the greatest difficulties of students when preparing a scientific report are presented in the design and methodology part, observing an increase at the end of the Master in the consideration that data analysis and obtaining results are also parts complex for its realization.
The students consider in a preferential way that ICT can be linked in a multidisciplinary way, being used in the different learning areas and that the knowledge acquired in the Master, can be extrapolated to their working life.
Finally, it has been observed that the main focuses where the teaching / learning problems are concentrated in the Master are the teachers, the organization and the lack of presence of the Master.