READING COMPREHENSION IN PSYCHOLOGY: STUDENTS OF THE INSTALLED AND DISTANCE SYSTEMS

• DOI: 10.22533/at.ed.55831723310510

• Palavras-chave: Reading skills, virtual course, University students, Psychology.

• Keywords: Reading skills, virtual course, University students, Psychology.

• Abstract:

  As teachers we repeatedly criticise undergraduate students for their poor preparation, serious difficulties in reading comprehension and the almost exclusive use of mechanical memorisation. In Mexico alone (INEE, 2009) 81% of students have minimal and insufficient competence in complex cognitive activities: analysis, synthesis and problem solving. The problem has been found in other Latin American countries (Cisneros, Olave & Rojas, 2012). For reading comprehension, a heuristic has been proposed for the strategic analysis of texts, which serves as a basis for teaching Methodological-Conceptual skills in Psychology students (Santoyo, 2001). Here we undertook the task of comparing the performance of students in the distance learning system of Psychology with students in the traditional system in the strategic analysis of texts. A sixth semester group of health psychology and a first semester group of experimental psychology participated. The procedure included a virtual course using the Moodle platform, where the analysis strategy was trained for both groups. The tendency of the distance group consisted of a steady increase to reach almost perfect performance. The face-to-face group showed more variability and did not reach such a high level. The differences between pre- and post-test were significant. This model offers a promising training experience, which aims to dislodge the copy-and-paste habit, and which must be tested in other subjects, or disciplines, that require the reading of empirical articles.