The visibility of gender in the practice of online education, a case study in UAA

Abstract

This article is a result of a broader research work that aimed to understand the sociocultural diversity of higher education students and their attention on the online education processes from the perspective of teachers who received distance education training at the Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, México (UAA). The research work was based on a qualitative paradigm and the case study research method was used. The technique for collecting the data consisted of semi-structured interviews with the teachers. The study was focused on the social and cultural features that are characteristic of online higher education students and the way they were assisted from that educational modality. However, gender as a sociocultural feature is highlighted in this article as it constitutes one of the most relevant differences. Twenty one teachers who belong to seven of the ten academic centers of the institution were interviewed. atlas ti was used as a support tool for the qualitative data analysis. The results obtained show that the teachers carried on technology-mediated observation processes during their online educational practices for identifying the sociocultural type differences of the students. These features refer to an articulated collection of discourse that influence on their learning effectiveness in which gender and the explanations regarding their attention are also found.