Uses of ICT Tools from the Perspective of Chilean University Teachers

: The use of the ICT in university learning processes is linked to their use by the educator. This aspect will determine the use of some resources over others, and consequently, the prevalence of some methodologies over others. The main objective of this work is to determine the use of the ICT by university educators, and from this, to determine which elements will deﬁne the design of a training program on the use of the ICT. For this, and with the use of an ex post facto method with a sample of n = 1113 subjects, the main result obtained was that the male professors utilized the digital tools more often for their teaching tasks. Furthermore, those with less professional experience preferred to use tools found in the cloud. Thus, it is concluded that the model of training observed from the demonstrated use of digital resources is linked to the preoccupation of education professionals for caring for the digital environment, and this model should be designed as a function of the methodologies and the system of evaluations utilized by the professors.


Introduction
The appearance of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the education sphere has brought with it changes that have affected the two main actors of the education process, students and educators. In the case of the former, their social reality has invaded their academic one through the introduction of digital resources such as videogames [1][2][3], Augmented and Virtual Reality [4,5], Applications (Apps) that they already used in their everyday life [6,7], the new virtual learning environments supported by tele-training platforms [8], etc., to their learning process. Today's university students are catalogued as "millennials", students who were born in the digital era, and as a result, their link with technological resources is greater than in previous eras, where the students had a more analogical profile.
As for the latter, the professors, it has been observed that they find themselves in a two-sided moment. On the one hand, they have to or need to update their teaching methods [9], and on the other, they must be in a continuous learning process, given that the continuous development of the digital tools implies the appearance of new resources or the improvement or disappearance of the existing ones, so that their use in teaching is contingent to this continuous educational renewal.
According to [10], the professors use the ICT timidly, due to a series of aspects related to the lack of previous training; the lack of infrastructure or resources provided by the universities [11,12], their attitudes and previous beliefs [9,13], their motivations [14] or feelings [15], or their resistance towards their use [11,13], etc. Therefore, it is necessary to know which tools they utilize the most, to determine the type of training that needs to be covered by the education institutions [21,29], as they are the ones responsible for offering their educators the strategies necessary to become trained and up to date. In this sense, the main objective of this work is to determine the degree of use of the digital tools by Chilean professors, in order to establish the training parameters needed for the development of the digital competence of the Chilean university educators.

Methods
The design of the research study utilized a descriptive approach with the use of a cross-sectional quantitative survey, defined as such due to the numerical and reliable nature of the data collected and the use of a deductive and structured research strategy [30]. More specifically, an ex post facto method of study was utilized. Therefore, the objective will be obtained a posteriori, as point out by [30].
Starting with the general objective presented above, the following specific objectives were established: • Specific objective 1: To determine the existence of differences related to the use of digital tools by the professors depending on gender. • Specific objective 2: To clarify the existence of differences on the use of the digital tools as a function of the years of professional experience. • Specific objective 3: To establish the elements that determine the use of digital tools.
Starting with these objectives, the following working hypotheses were posited: Hypothesis 1. The women use the digital tools more compared to the men.

Hypothesis 2.
The professors with less professional experience utilize digital tools to a greater extent than the older ones.

Participants
The participating sample was composed of n = 1113 professors from the INTEC University in Chile, and the guidelines established by [31] were followed for their selection. Of these, 31.8% were women and 68.2% men, with an average age of 41-50 years old. The mean years of professional experience was 6-10 years (see Table 1). From the total, 64.4% indicated not having pedagogical training on the use of the ICT in the classroom.

Instrument
For the collection of data, an adaptation of the instrument designed by [32] was utilized. This adaptation was performed at the linguistic level, given that the original was written in Spanish from Spain, and had to be adapted to Chilean Spanish. Furthermore, descriptive variables of the samples were modified. In the end, the questionnaire was composed by 58 items, which were distributed into 2 dimensions. The first corresponded to the demographic study of the participating sample, and if they had or not pedagogical training linked to the ICT, for a total of 4 items; and the second dimension referred to the use of the digital tools by the educator, comprised of 54 items. The response scale utilized was Likert-type with 7 options, where 1 was "I never use it", and 7 was "I always use it".
The reliability test, Cronbach's Alpha, provided a value of α = 0.9779, a very high value according to the literature [32], thereby indicating that the instrument had a high reliability.
The Exploratory Factorial Analysis (EFA) performed to determine the validity was conducted through the extraction of principal axis factoring and Kaiser-normalized varimax rotation with self-values higher than 1. The instrument was adjusted to 8 factors which explained 62.96% of the variance, as factorial loads higher than 0.40 were considered [33], showing acceptable Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin variables (KMO = 0.965) [34][35][36], and a significant Bartlett's sphericity (χ2 (1321) = 13,000.220 and p < 0.001). The resulting 8 dimensions had Alpha values that were very similar to the original instrument [32] (see Table 2).  To verify the viability of the 8 dimensions established by the EFA, a confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) was performed with the "Maximum Likelihood" utilized as the method of estimation. It verified the existence of 8 factors and eliminated 3 items that had a score lower than 0.90, and which affected factors 2 and 4 (see Figure A1) [37].
To assess the goodness-of-fit of the model identified, the following were considered: a χ2/degrees of freedom test, the comparative fit index, the incremental fit index and the normed fit index, the Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), the root mean residual (RMR), the root means square error or approximation (RMSEA) and the expected cross validation index (ECVI), with the following values found: The set of indices provides adequate values (χ2/df with values of 1.43, values lower than 0.06 in the case of the RMSEA and SRMR; and values higher than 0.90 for CFI, IFI, NFI and NNFI [32,33], which verifies the model of factors proposed and with it, guaranteeing the validity of the construct of the instrument (see Table 3). Sub-dimension 1, which referred to the methodology that the teacher uses in the classroom and that links to their perception and/or beliefs regarding the incorporation of technologies into the classroom and to the evaluation of the student, included items such as "I know how to maintain a balanced attitude in the use of technology", "I have criteria to evaluate the reliability of the sources of information", or "I know how to combine digital technology with the analogical one for searching for solutions". The second one includes items that refer to the use of instruments to develop collaborative learning, the creation of videos, the gamification of the classroom or the creation of QR codes. The third dimension encompasses items that refer to the resolution of the management and storage in the cloud, while the fourth adds to them their safe use and the protection of the student and the educator during their use when learning. The fifth sub-dimension encompasses items such as availability of spaces for updating and teaching digital competence for the classroom, the digital identity, tending to diversity in the classroom, etc. The sixth covers aspects related to the care of the digital environment due to the use of digital tools. The last two sub-dimensions group items that refer to the knowledge of software such as the digital blackboard, open projects and resources in the case of the seventh sub-dimension, and as for the eighth, it is related to the knowledge about the availability of software for information and being informed. Lastly, it was verified that the α values followed the patterns established for the instrument as a whole.

Procedure
The study is based on a positivist paradigm, commonly used in quantitative research, and is explanatory in nature, given that it seeks to define the variables that are conditioned or related between each other [34]; more specifically, the use of the ICT by Chilean professors in their everyday tasks in the classroom. For this reason, a sample of university professor was selected, after asking for the necessary permissions from the legal officers, as specified in the ethical guidelines of research.

Statistical Analysis
The analysis of the data was quantitative, starting with a basic description of the variables (measured as the central tendency and dispersion); afterwards, a multivariate analysis was performed with multiple regression analysis. A general analysis was utilized to seek a model that explained the use of the ICT by Chilean university professors for teaching in their classrooms, and a more specific one related to other predictive elements that determine the sample, all of these were performed with the statistical program SPSS v.23.

Results
The initial analysis of the behavior of the items (see Table 4) indicated that the participating sample was inclined towards using the ICT a few times in the classroom, as well as in their professional development. However, it should be underlined that the professors indicated not using the following ICT very much in the process of teaching: tools such as gamification and podcasts in class, or the production and/or creation of QR codes, and the different licenses needed to publish content and Augmented Reality. On the other hand, it should be highlighted that the tools that were most utilized were those that referred to the creation of presentations on the curricular content as well as navigating the internet in search of information. If we focus our attention on the professor's gender, we verify, with Student's t-test (see Table 5), that only two sub-dimensions showed differences, and that these were in favor of the men, so that it can be inferred that they have a greater use of the tools for the creation of learning and those linked to their safety online. Thus, the first hypothesis is rejected which stated that women used the ICT tools more. On the other hand, to verify if there were significant differences as a function of years of teaching experience, an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed, which indicated that there were only differences in the third dimension [F(6.1106 = 2.388, p = 0.027)] between the professors who had between 6 and 10 years of professional experience, and those with more than 30 years of experience [t (1106) = 3.32, p = 0.019, η 2 = 0.006], while the multiple comparisons indicate that the other dimensions were not significant, as indicated by the Bonferroni values (see Table 6). As shown in Table 7, the sub-dimensions established by the EFA performed correlated between themselves with a level of significance of 0.001, which indicates a good relationship between the 54 items of the instrument.   [35,37,38]) (see Table 8). This indicates that the equation that explains MAA = −0.033 + 0.084CDE, implies that the methodology of attention to the students and the system of evaluation used by the professors (MAA) is associated the care of the digital environment (CDE). The tests performed with the residues of this regression show that the values of VIF > 1.0 (see Table 7), indicating non-multicollinearity. Likewise, the homoscedasticity and the linearity of the residues observed in the figures comply with the assumptions [30]; and lastly, the application of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test (Z = 1.576 and p = 0.014) to the residues verifies the existence of this linearity.

Discussion
The discussion should start with the premise that ICTs contribute to the improvement of the teaching-learning process, although it should not be assumed that their use per se will result in an improvement or substantial change in the final result of the teaching action [39]. Starting with this idea, it should be considered that this change goes hand in hand with the use of the digital resources by the professors. In light of this, it was verified that the Chilean university professors who participated in this study, in agreement with other works [17,29], need training on the use of ICT for their implementation in their classrooms, as the degree of training received for their use, as indicated by them, was low. This indicates that there is a demand for a training structure for the professional development of the educators in the digital arena [13,16,40].
In general, the Chilean professors consulted sometimes utilized ICT in their classrooms, which denotes a low use of the digital resources, as opposed to the works by [11,13,41], who pointed out the great deployment of the technological elements utilized by the professors in their classrooms.
It is significant that while some research studies report on the great use of digital tools [11]-mainly Augmented Reality [4,19,20], gamification [1][2][3], podcasts [11,42], and software use licenses [43]-in this study, the participants indicated using them very little, as compared to the presentation tools such as PowerPoint, Genially or Prezi, which the professors indicated using them very often. All of this could be due to the scarce digital training possessed by the professors, as indicated by them.
It is significant that the search for information online was one of the actions performed, just as the professors from other countries or institutions [11,39].
However, not all the educators thought the same. In this sense, the men were more inclined towards the development of digital methodologies and systems of evaluation, in contrast to the studies by [18,41], who indicated that women were more prone towards this. As a result, hypothesis 1 must be rejected (The women use the digital tools more as compared to the men), just as the results from the study by [26,27,[43][44][45][46][47], and in contrast to the results found by [26,29,48,49] whose research determined this aspect as a possible creator of a gender digital divide [50]. In this sense, it should be indicated that the academic community does not seem to have reached a consensus about the variable gender, as shown by different studies conducted about the topic [26,29,[44][45][46][47][48][49]. As a result, it is interesting to utilize this variable linked to the context.
Focusing on the years of professional experience of the professors (specific objective 2), it was found that the educators with 6-10 years of professional experience, considered to be young [51], were the ones who were more inclined towards the use of the tools that are available online to store information, such as Dropbox or Google Drive, as well as to create presentations by utilizing resources such as Genially, or to manage the monitoring of access through remote desktops [11,29,50], compared to those with greater teaching experience, who depend more on the traditional methodology [52]. In this case, hypothesis 2 is accepted just as in the works from [51,53], who pointed to a technical profile in the use of the ICT of the educators as a function of the years of professional experience.
Lastly, the study conducted, which aimed to determine which elements have an effect on the use of the ICT by Chilean professors (objective 3) has shown that a single element is responsible, which is none other than the methodology of attention and evaluation, which interacts directly with the caring for the digital environment. This element indicates that the use of the ICT by the Chilean university professors is linked with the methodology and the system of evaluation, and this is in turn affected by those methods or systems that are related to the digital environment, so that the professor's professional development occurs as a function of these variables [50].
As a result of this, we consider that a training strategy, the target population of which is the educator, should first of all relate the different tools with the diverse methodologies that the professors could use.
Various studies [50,52,[54][55][56][57][58] have stated that the educators feel self-conscious due to a lack of technological skills and the fact that the students have a greater knowledge in this field, and as a result, a greater digital competence. For this, the presentation of teaching innovation experiences which show their viability is indispensable and necessary to be able to provide support and a response to the online digital training needs, in line with that proposed by [54,57]. On the other hand, the design of a training program will need the creation of a repository of digital resources bundled according to subjects and levels of difficulty.

Conclusions
The main conclusion of the present work is that Chilean university professors need pedagogical training on digital resources, which will allow for the development of their digital competence. Along this line, it should be indicated that the educators in general demand training, but afterwards there is a decrease in the number of educators that link their professional development with the demand of theoretical-practical training that will allow them to update their methodologies. The social and professional demand of today imply that the professors possess digital skills and competencies and are able to transform the knowledge transmitted to the students through the use of diverse digital resources.
On the other hand, it was verified that the university institutions are responsible for implementing a training program that allows the educators to place value on the pedagogic usefulness of said resources if they want to be at the forefront of higher education. In this sense, it established that the participating professors have a more technological view on the use of the ICT in the classroom as opposed to a pedagogical one, and this is reason why this variable should be utilized in the training processes implemented by the institutions.
We considered that the institutions are not experiencing great transformations in the field of the development of the educator's digital culture, and the fact that the growth is dependent on the will of the educators has resulted in the stagnation of the education centers.
For this, three aspects are vital as the pillars of education proposals: work methodologies linked to digital resources, an efficient system of evaluation with a digital format, and caring for the digital environment through the use of tools designed for this purpose. In conclusion, it is necessary to provide Chilean professors with an attractive education proposal that is not rooted in their willinginess to improve and that promotes the professor's initiative. provide Chilean professors with an attractive education proposal that is not rooted in their willinginess to improve and that promotes the professor's initiative.