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The use of educational

software in the development

of logic skills in higher

education.

El uso de software educativo en el

desarrollo de las destrezas lógicas en

la educación superior

Esther Elizabeth Gonzabay De la A

María Gabriela Campuzano Páez

Abstract

In certain occasions we wonder why students fail to solve certain

types of logic problems and not in others, one of the causes of this

fact is due to the lack of knowledge of some learning technique or

because they have poor logical reasoning, which is reflected in the

low academic performance of students. The population considered

is the Information Technology Career of the Peninsula Santa Elena

State University and as a sample two parallels are taken from the

population that are linked to this study. The investigated topic is of

vital importance in subjects where analysis and logical reasoning of

problems are required, in addition, it directly influences the practice

of basic thought processes.

Keywords: logical skills, higher education, problem solving.

* Master's Degree in Computer Education, St. Helena

Peninsula State University, egonzabay@upse.edu.ec

esthergonzabay@gmail.com

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3897-3700

* Master of science in energy and environmental

managemenT, St. Helena Peninsula State University,

mcampuzano@upse.edu.ec

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1522-0228

Article

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Resumen

En determinadas ocasiones nos preguntamos por qué los estudiantes

fracasan al resolver cierto tipo de problemas de lógica y en otros no,

una de las causas de este hecho se da por el desconocimiento de

alguna técnica de aprendizaje o porque poseen escaso razonamiento

lógico, lo que se refleja en el bajo rendimiento académico de los

estudiantes. La población que se considera es la Carrera de

Tecnologías de la Información de la Universidad Estatal Península

de Santa Elena y como muestra se toman dos paralelos de la

población que están vinculados a este estudio. El tema investigado

es de vital importancia en asignaturas donde se requiere el análisis y

el razonamiento lógico de problemas, además influye directamente

en la práctica de los procesos básicos del pensamiento.

Palabras clave: destrezas lógicas, educación superior, resolución de

problemas.

Introduction

Research in the field of education is considered of vital importance,

a deeper approach to students' answers. We ask why students fail in

solving certain types of logic problems and fail in others, what are

the factors that play an important role in this area. We also reflected

on the types of problems, their unknowns and the way students

understand them. While the students were solving some logic

problems, we observed different factors that can favor or hinder the

solving process, among which I can cite the fact that some questions

were not fully understood, because there is not an adequate analysis.

Based on this concern, the main objective of this work is to rethink

the logical skills of students in the teaching-learning process, and by

ramification, the development of problems. In order to improve the

limited logical skills, the use of educational software is proposed,

which will allow in a certain way to improve this existing weakness

in the students. This software includes one of the factors considered

key in the development of current competencies, the ability to solve

the proposed problems.

(M.Edgar, 2014) states that "The underlying assumption is that the

ability to solve problems is a special type of engineering education,

which results from developing logical-interpretative and abstractive

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ability in students. On the other hand, there are different ways to

solve problems and each requires different types of skills and

abilities in logic and abstraction.". In the framework of the project

on Definition and Selection of Key Competencies, they place them

in the corresponding category of "Key Competencies".

(Cooperation, 2005)In the framework of the project on Definition

and Selection of Key Competencies, they are placed in the category

corresponding to the use of interactive tools, which refers to the

effective use of spoken and written language, computer skills and

mathematical skills in multiple situations. Finally, logical skills are

part of the essential tools for the future professional to perform well

in society, in the workplace, and to be able to participate in an

effective dialogue with others.

The method to be used adopts different methodological alignments,

ranging from specific processes to the use of some statistical

techniques.

The present work contemplates the existing difficulties in the context

where the research is developed, the formulation of the problem, the

objectives and the justification of the research; besides considering

the theory that sustains this research project, the same that provides

a deepening of the different representations and explanatory

guidelines of the logical skills, the process of problem solving seen

from many theoretical perspectives, and what is an educational

software.

It also includes the methodology to be used in the research, which

includes the modality and types of research, the population and the

sample, tools and procedures of the research that are an essential part

and will provide a solution to each of the inadequacies found in this

research. It also contains analysis and interpretation of results, with

discussion of these, ending with the conclusions reached with this

study and recommendations.

The Peninsula Santa Elena State University is a Public Institution of

Higher Education, whose purpose is focused on four functions:

professional training in the different branches of knowledge,

scientific research that seeks knowledge and solutions to the

problems of the province and the country, the link with its

community for the dissemination and development of projects that

transfer the university work in its extension and participates in

increasing its social responsibility, and administrative management

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that allows the optimal use of its resources to carry out its training

work.

This career is based on the study of the contexts of the exact, natural

and applied sciences from a theoretical-methodological,

epistemological, holistic and systemic vision, for the transformation

of the productive matrix within the framework of organizational

management, with the use and application of algorithmic techniques,

numerical modeling and the general theory of systems, which

generate technological solutions.

In the mentioned career, subjects related to logic problems are

taught; in the development of this one, students find the content

complicated, which hinders their learning and subsequent approval

of the subject. While it is true that the subject is based on

programming processes in languages according to each academic

year, it is affected by some factors among which predominates the

lack of any didactic resource to improve the logical skills of students.

In the labor field of an educator, regardless of the area in which

he/she works, some problems arise that are subject to his/her

profession, which usually are not frequent and become routine, and

are not considered with the seriousness of the case, for example, the

low level of development of logical skills in students, this aspect is

totally neglected and leads to many students of various educational

levels.

The student in many occasions finds himself in a series of problems

such as absences to classes, shortage of reference books, insensitive

teachers, old teaching methods, lack of resources in the classroom

for learning, inappropriate classrooms for teaching-learning; In

addition to this, there are also personal problems, for example, lack

of motivation in their family environment, failures that make them

feel frustrated, low academic performance, which causes them to get

bad grades and other situations that induce the person to indiscipline,

which hinders their intellectual and academic progress.

These factors mentioned above influence the students of the

Information Technology Career of the Peninsula Santa Elena State

University, so we see the need to propose the use and development

of computer didactic resources for the subject Fundamentals of

Programming, since students have insufficient logical skills in the

aforementioned subject, and this would be a methodological help for

them to improve some aspects of their daily life, such as feeling self-

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confident, motivated, eager to work and above all seeing that the

subject is not difficult to cope with, emphasizing that to improve

logical skills, many other variables external to the student intervene,

such as the quality of teaching by the teacher, the classroom

environment, family, educational program, etc.

This research is important because it will help in the problem of

insufficient logical skills of students in the subject of logical

reasoning, taking as a resource an educational software that will

allow to improve the analysis in the students of the Information

Technology Career of the Peninsula State University of Santa Elena

and thus improve their academic performance and at the same time

guarantee a quality education to new students.

Through the analysis of the theoretical approaches that will facilitate

the descriptions of assumptions and explanation of the variables, the

present work contributes to a great extent to improve the logical

skills in the resolution of the problems posed.

The research is based on several theoretical foundations, which are

essential for the understanding of this research article and are

detailed below.

(Castaño, 2004) defines skills as "The ability of a person to perform

an activity, to develop in his or her family and social environment,

or to solve problems autonomously" (p. 37).

The Encyclopedic Dictionary of Education defines skills as "the

ability of an individual to execute a perceptual, motor, manual,

intellectual, or social activity, among others." (p. 127)

Skills are understood as practices, arising from the individual's

capacity that, converted into competencies, have achieved an

immediate level of development with efficiency and effectiveness.

Basically, the skill is where a series of elements or a solid set guided

by what the mind imagines, everything that unfolds in us through

sensations and their definition, is revealed.

(González, 2011) mentions that "Logical skills are: the ability to

reason adequately and effectively. This includes sensitivity to logical

schemes and relationships, statements and propositions (if-then,

cause-effect), functions and abstractions. The types of processes

used in the service of this skill include: categorization, classification,

inference, generalization, computation, and hypothesis

demonstration." (p,1)

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Logical skills are capabilities developed by the human being and

their main function is to make inferences from a given situation and

reach a logical conclusion, for this it is required to carry out a

sequential process such as setting an objective, identify the premises,

analyze them and reach a solution, this solution must be contrasted

with the correct output of information. Some authors who give their

point of view about logical skills, and indicate:

According to Dr. C. L. Pérez, logical or thinking ability is understood

as the content of those actions of the intellect that are developed in

the process of knowledge, which are carried out through logical

operations and must be mastered throughout the teaching-

educational process.

According to S. L. Rubinstein, logical abilities are the content of the

actions of cognitive activity determined by the logical relations that

exist between the starting point of the cognitive process and its

result.

According to the considerations made by H. Fuentes and others,

based on the classification given by N. F. Talízina and C. Álvarez,

these are expressed in three groups:

1- Specific skills, specific to the sciences, professions or

technologies that are the object of study or work.

2- Logical or intellectual skills, which contribute to the assimilation

of the content of the disciplines and support logical thinking,

both in learning and in life.

3- Communication skills inherent to the teaching process, which are

essential for its development.

The use of logical reasoning contains mathematical calculations,

ability to solve mathematical problems and find a correct solution,

ability to understand relationships between mathematics and real

life, to handle concrete and abstract concepts and to be able to

propose hypotheses.

Logical skills are skills that the subject has to use digits, basic

operations, symbols, signs and ways of their inferences, in order to

be able to understand and express their reasoning and solve problems

that arise in their daily life, as well as in the school environment.

(Gagné,1991), states that "a problem consists of a goal state, an

initial state and the set of all possible resolution paths leading to the

goal from the initial state".(p. 45).

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Hayes, cited by (Hardy and Jackson, 2001), "defined a problem as

the empty space that separates us from the initial state and the goal

state".

(Puente, 2003), states that "a problem exists when a person is faced

with a situation that requires a plan and action to change the existing,

undesired state to another, ideal state". (p. 35)

(Ministry of Education, 2006), a problem is a situation that hinders

the achievement of some goal, so it is necessary to find the means to

solve it, mitigating or canceling its effects.

With the aforementioned definitions, I define a problem as the

situation that hinders the progress of a reality and that it is necessary

to develop a plan and an action to reach the desired goal in order to

change the state from problem to solution.

(Sanchez,1999) defines: "The concept of Educational Software as

any computer program whose structural and functional

characteristics support the process of teaching, learning and

administration".

(Lamas, 2000) defines: "As a computer application that, supported

by a well-defined pedagogical strategy, directly supports the

teaching-learning process, constituting an effective instrument for

the educational development of the man of the next century" (Lamas,

2000).

Educational software is considered as the set of useful computer

resources in the teaching-learning process, which implies that

technology is incorporated into the academic process of students to

motivate learning in problem solving.

(Ricardo A. Baeza Yates, 1993) expresses in his book that if "We

examine visual and collaborative tools that can be useful in the

understanding of software engineering (SE). We analyze the

experience of the use and impact of these tools in education,

proposing new ways of using them and future research directions."

The use of educational software by teachers: Enriches the field of

Pedagogy by incorporating technology that revolutionizes teaching

- learning, also allows to control the tasks individually or

collectively, allows to raise the educational quality.

The use given by the student to the educational software is of vital

importance since nowadays they require interactive resources that

facilitate and motivate learning, especially in subjects related to

problem solving.

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When we decide to incorporate software in our classroom to develop

teaching-learning activities, we are choosing different strategies

directly or indirectly. That is, we can intend, for example, that

students exercise and practice, develop problem-solving activities,

which in turn can be planned individually or in groups.

The production of educational software involves a certain degree of

complexity since decisions must be made regarding content,

teaching strategies and the appropriate design to facilitate the

learning process for the user or student.

The use of educational software for the improvement of logical skills

is based on one of the learning theories which is the constructivist

one, emphasizing also Jean Piaget's and Educational Technology.

They specify the learning environment necessary for the

construction of educational software. Constructivism emphasizes

the learning process rather than the acquisition of the products. This

theory is further expanded below, as it has been used in the research.

(Morin, 2021) "The education of the future will have to be a first and

universal education, centered on the human condition, with a re-

linking of knowledge resulting from integrating the invaluable

contribution of the humanities, not only philosophy and history, but

also literature, poetry, the arts..." (p, 23). Unity in the different

humanities is very important; for quality education to exist, it is

necessary to integrate scholarship and for students and teachers to

feel committed to completing their knowledge.

(P. Hernández, 1998), explains that "constructivism starts from the

student's reality, previous knowledge and beliefs". Constructivism

promotes more open learning strategies, where the results vary

depending on each individual, and the designer of constructivist

environments must design materials and strategies that facilitate

learning.

These theories establish that students are active agents who seek and

construct knowledge with a purpose, within a representative context,

which generates changes in the role of the teacher as a transmitter of

knowledge, who is considered the main source of information,

expert in content and source of all the answers, who controls and

directs all aspects of learning, in the same way the student is a

collaborator, a participant responsible for his own learning, shares

knowledge and sometimes participates as an expert.

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(Piaget, 1982) has a basic vision about how people perceive the

external nature through the senses, taking into account the

evolutionary aspect up to the adaptation to the place where it

develops. Then for the progress of logical skills it is necessary to

use the senses, this process will serve for the individual to go through

the part of adaptation to the workplace and the organization of

knowledge.

Piaget affirms that the development of intelligence is achieved by

the adaptation of the person to the environment, considering

adaptation as an instance in which information enters and another of

organization in which this information is structured.

Although Piaget was not in favor of the use of computers in

education, his ideas influenced future work of other authors related

to the incorporation of computers in education, which will be applied

to the development of educational software for the improvement of

logical skills in problem solving.

Another contemporary pedagogical trend is Educational

Technology, which is the process of incorporating technology in the

classroom, this helps teachers to reinforce their didactics and

educational practice or transform it. The creation of Educational

Technology is attributed to Skinner, a Harvard professor, in 1954, in

his context this pedagogical trend follows a stimulus-response

scheme, which is nothing more than the consequence of the incessant

search for finding in the teaching-learning process; a scientific

support that makes possible the starting point of the use of technical

resources - suitable materials for learning, with the help of elements

of biological nature, characterized by the central nervous subsystem

of the human being, with which the mentioned resources can interact

giving as a result a new knowledge acquired in the most efficient

way possible.

The approach of this trend proposes as an objective that the student

feels motivated and internalizes already established contents, which

will then have to be verified in the application of educational

software. In this theory, educational software serves as an aid in the

teaching-learning process, as it helps the student to expand the

information, perform practical activities, exchange information with

the environment, perform exercises or establish an interactive

relationship.

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Materials and methods

In this sense, the research presented here is of a Diagnostic, Field,

Descriptive-Explanatory type.

It is diagnostic because although there are studies of this type, there

are not many findings on this subject in the educational field;

therefore, it was necessary to seek relevant information through a

study, detailing the problems that gave rise to this research.

It is field research because the information was obtained directly

from the people involved in this research, that is to say, it reached

the place of the facts, thus evidencing the reciprocity between cause

and effect. Within the field research is the observation stage, which

was used to locate the problem, the decline in terms of logical skills

in the teaching-learning process, which hinders the progress of the

contents.

It is descriptive since it allows comparisons to be made between two

or more phenomena, which implies being aware of situations on the

use of logical skills in the academic performance of students,

promoting an accurate description of the activities. The variables and

the relationship between them are identified by means of a

qualitative-quantitative analysis in which the results are analyzed

with the purpose of elaborating generalizations that contribute to

understanding.

It is Explanatory since the characteristics of this type of study

emanate from an abundant theoretical body; they identify the causal

relationships, in addition to using knowledge from other studies such

as: books, graduate theses, publications on the Internet.

The universe or population of the present investigation will be

constituted by teachers, students and directors of the Information

Technology Career, of the Faculty of Systems and

Telecommunications of the UPSE. Undoubtedly, the selection of the

population is a fundamental pillar within the research process since

it leads to delimit the scope of the study by specifying a population

and selecting a sample.

The number of students that attend this career, attend the university

from different parts of the province of Santa Elena, most of them are

of medium-low social status, between the ages of 18 to 35 years, who

participate in the virtual and face-to-face mode. The population to be

taken into account in the study is detailed below:

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Table 1. Research population

POPULATION

Number

Management

Teaching Staff

Students

Total

283

(Alvarez, 2011)defines the sample as "a set of objects and subjects

from a population, i.e. a subgroup of the population, when this is

defined as a set of elements that meet certain specifications" (p. 124).

According to the author I say that the sample is a part of the

population that is selected to carry out the study. A sample must be

representative, that is, it must reflect the essential characteristics of

the population to be studied.

As mentioned by the author, the sample is a small part of the research

population and to establish the needs of students and teachers, a

sample will be taken by applying the total population of students,

teachers and management.

Among the research instruments used were questionnaires for

students and teachers, which made it possible to diagnose and obtain

information objectively from the group of people to be considered in

the research. Another instrument used was the survey, where the

Likert scale was used.

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Results

After completing the data processing stage in this study, the data

were coded and transformed into numerical symbols using a

technological application.

The surveys in this research allowed the collection of the necessary

information for the data to be tabulated and thus verify the questions

posed, the sample satisfies the validity and reliability of the research.

Figure 1. Creation and use of educational software teachers

The teachers surveyed stated that 90% agreed with the creation and

use of educational software, as they consider it important for

students to improve their logical skills, which allows them to manage

daily classes in a friendly and interactive way.

Totalmente de acuerdo

De acuerdo

Indiferente

En desacuerdo

Totalmente en desacuerdo

- 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Totalmente de acuerdo

De acuerdo

Indiferente

En desacuerdo

Totalmente en desacuerdo

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Figure 2. Creation and use of educational software students

93% of the respondents stated that the creation and use of

educational software will help to improve their logical skills,

because through user-computer interaction, learning will become

interesting and attractive. Students will have the interest to learn

more and will be provided with the right techniques to get the desired

results.

The results that are triggered based on the research are the following:

The teaching-learning process would be complemented with the use

of an educational software to improve the logical skills in the

students of the Information Technologies Career of the Peninsula

State University of Santa Elena, in the subject of Fundamentals of

Programming Telecommunications, this indicates obtaining 90% in

the survey to teachers and 93% in the survey to students, who state

that they agree with the proposal made.

90% of the teachers expressed that they strongly agree with the use

of educational software that serves as a support tool in the

professional training of students and at the same time improves the

quality of learning through access to didactic resources that allow

the exchange of information.

Discussion

Nowadays the new information and communication technologies are

the alternative to cohesive an optimal learning of the sciences of

knowledge and are the tools that students use in their daily life, but

Totalmente de acuerdo

De acuerdo

Indiferente

En desacuerdo

Totalmente en desacuerdo

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Totalmente de acuerdo De acuerdo

Indiferente En desacuerdo

Totalmente en desacuerdo

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without a correct application, for such reason the modern teacher

must direct in a coherent way the use of these tools to get to change

the mentality of the student on the use of these wonderful

applications.

The application of educational software will have a highly positive

impact on education, specifically in the area of computer science,

since it will strengthen the teacher's work at all times and will help

the student with a much more attractive, interactive and dynamic

class that will motivate him/her 100% to learn.

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