This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution/NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International Public License - CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
sa/4.0/legalcode.es
Sinergias educativas
July - Septiembre Vol. 9 - 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
eISSN: 2661-6661
revistasinergias@soyuo.mx
Page 35-47
Received: March 09 , 2024
Approved: June 12 , 202
Digital educational platform in English
proficiency for the Basic Education
School Dr. Herman B Parker of the San
Vicente Commune
Plataforma educativa digital en suficiencia de inglés
para la Escuela de Educación Básica Dr. Herman B
Parker de la Comuna San Vicente
Franklin Damian Suárez Lainez
*
Fabián David Domínguez Pizarro
*
Abstract
The main objective of this research work was to determine the
development of English language proficiency level A1 in the
teaching-learning process in the students of the Dr. Herman Parker
School of Basic Education, through studies for the application of a
digital educational platform in the subject of English, which will
allow the teacher to generate interactive learning processes. For this
purpose, a study was carried out under a non-experimental,
transactional and descriptive design, in which the hypothetical-
deductive method was used in the analysis of the information. In the
results, information was obtained from the teachers and students of
the fifth year of EGB of the Educational Institution, whose analysis
was carried out using statistical tables as well as bar diagrams that
represented the percentage of each statement, all of this so that an
analysis of each of the statements could be carried out. With this, it
was possible to contribute to the possible feasibility of the Schoology
platform for English language teaching and how it can facilitate the
Master's Degree in Education, mention in Educational
Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Education
franklind.suarez@educacion.gob.ec, https://orcid.org/0000-
0001-6571-3720
Magíster en Educación mención Tecnología e Innovación
Educativa, St. Helena Peninsula State University,
fdominguez@upse.edu.ec, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-
4552
Article
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
36
development of learning activities, strengthening autonomous, team
and collaborative learning.
Keywords: Platform - LMS Schoology - Teaching - Learning -
Sufficiency
Resumen
El presente Trabajo de Investigación, tuvo como objetivo principal,
determinar el desarrollo de la suficiencia del idioma inglés nivel A1
en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en los estudiantes de la
Escuela de Educación Básica Dr. Herman Parker, a través de
estudios para la aplicación de una plataforma educativa digital en la
asignatura de inglés, la cual permitirá al docente, generar procesos
de aprendizaje interactivos. Para ello, se hizo un estudio bajo un
diseño no experimental, transaccional y de carácter descriptivo, en
el cual, se empleó el método hipotético-deductivo en el análisis de la
información. En los resultados, se consiguió información de los
docentes y estudiantes de quinto año de EGB de la Institución
Educativa, cuyo análisis se realizó mediante tablas estadísticas
además de diagramas de barras que representaron el porcentaje de
cada enunciado, todo esto para que se pudiera llevar a cabo un
análisis de cada uno de los enunciados. Con ello, fue posible
contribuir la posible factibilidad que posee la plataforma Schoology
para la enseñanza del idioma inglés y como esta puede facilitar el
desarrollo de las actividades de aprendizaje, fortaleciendo el
aprendizaje autónomo, en equipo y colaborativo.
Palabras clave: Plataforma - LMS Schoology - Enseñanza
Aprendizaje – Suficiencia
Introduction
The competences and proficiency of English, at present, are factors
of development and of great importance for the possibilities of
growth and development of the human being. We live in a globalised
world, in which the processes of work management, study,
commercial exchange and social interaction, in general, demand
from people a second language, which allows them to be competent
and competitive in their professional performance, as well as
providing them with guarantees of interpersonal communication
with individuals from other latitudes.
Thus, the English language has become an academic necessity in
recent times, especially for young people, since it allows them a
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
37
greater opening to the labour and professional field. For this reason,
it is essential that students in their basic teaching and learning
process achieve mastery of the language skills that will lead to
optimum performance in their Baccalaureate education as well as in
their future career in Higher Education and, subsequently, in their
professional performance. In this context, English as a language
enables communication processes between groups, which are
essential for people to be able to communicate in a globalised world,
and this will help them to satisfy their needs, whether in terms of
work or study.
How will the implementation of the digital educational platform
Schoology influence the development of the A1 level of the English
language in the students of Secondary Basic Education of the Basic
Education School Dr. Herman B Parker of the San Vicente
Commune?
It is systematised with the following subproblems that intervene in
the implementation of a digital educational platform:
In what way will the use of the Schoology platform
reinforce the educational process in the teaching of the
English language in the basic education school?
Will the students of the educational institution be able to
adequately use a digital educational platform for English
language teaching and achieve A1 level?
What will be the possible advantages of knowing all the
resources that LMS Schoology has incorporated?
To analyse the feasibility of the application of the Schoology
platform for the development of Level A1 of the English language
in the teaching-learning process of the students of Educación Básica
Media of the Escuela de Educación Básica Dr. Herman B Parker of
the Comuna San Vicente in the Cantón Santa Elena, in the province
of Santa Elena, Ecuador.
To develop a bibliographic and web-graphic exploration of
experiences in the implementation of the digital educational platform
LMS Schoology, through the search for articles and texts concerning
the subject, which will allow the formation of a scientific theoretical
foundation in the analysis of the feasibility of technological
resources.
To diagnose the need for the implementation of a digital educational
platform in the subject of English, by consulting part of the
Educational Community (Authority, Teachers and Students) in the
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
38
teaching-learning process of the Virtual Pedagogical
Accompaniments.
Validate the impact of the educational platform, through empirical
information with the opinion of the teachers in the area of English,
to know the adequacy and relevance it has in the teaching of the A1
level of the English language in Public Educational Institutions.
The main purpose of the implementation of a digital educational
platform is to provide teachers with a new alternative for teaching
English, based on the use of technology, motivating them to use
virtual tools to carry out classroom activities. In the same way, new
methodological alternatives are incorporated that contemplate
educational principles for an adequate management of institutional
educational resources, being effective, efficient and effective with
the educational service offered to primary school students.
It provides important resources so that a correlational research
project design can be properly developed and presented, based on
the use of free and open source interactive educational resources,
offering fundamental parameters and tools when planning new and
innovative proposals. This work will serve as a tool for teachers, so
that they can improve and innovate their didactic teaching of
English, while at the same time they can see effective results in the
teaching and learning process of their students.
The Schoology educational platform (see www.schoology.com) is
considered a learning management system (Schoology, 2021), which
has emerged as an LMS that is committed to the creation of cloud-
based learning networks, offering the necessary tools to manage an
online classroom through an interface similar to that of a social
network. It has been used more frequently in recent years, although
other platforms and virtual learning environments have been
released, Schoology provides great advantages and benefits for users
to have better and greater access to information. The Schoology
platform offers the services of a traditional LMS to manage
interactive virtual courses using resources and activities from the
programme environment; but it also provides various
communication tools and the possibility of integrating external
applications and other LMSs (López-Ocando, 2014).
An approach to the behaviour of the use of virtual platforms as a
means of teaching reveals a large amount of information that has
been generated in recent times. There has been a great deal of
research on the advances in face-to-face, blended or distance
education, or, as it is better known, online education.
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
39
In this sense, the state of the art is a great journey that is made as part
of the theoretical foundation on the position of the subject in the
scientific sphere, which allows us to know what has been its
behaviour over time. In this opportunity, some research and
empirical references are presented that serve as support to
understand the topic and its possibilities of approach, as well as to
complement the theoretical and methodological development of the
topic presented in this research, which is oriented to the need for the
use of virtual platforms to achieve learning in the subject of English.
Trejo-González, (2018) in his research article published for the
Mexican journal VERBUM ET LINGUA, investigated on the digital
platforms Learning Management System (LMS), in which he
proposed to expand the possibilities of offering didactics in terms of
technologies for the teaching of teachers, specifically in the use of
LMS and their possibilities of integration in teaching under a virtual
modality.
Vargas-Hernández, (2018) in her research entitled "Use of the
Schoology Platform for the Development of the Written Ability of
the English Language" set out to develop the written skills of the
English language in a group of eight 5th grade students, aged
between 10 and 12 years old. A Likert scale type questionnaire was
applied to them, in which they were asked questions about the
development of skills in the management of the learning
management system provided by the Schoology platform.
Anchundia-Bajaña, (2017) in her research entitled "Schoology
educational platform and its contribution to the academic
performance of students in the third year of high school at the
"Eugenio Espejo" replica educational unit, Babahoyo canton, Los
Ríos province" (2017), presented as a Bachelor's Thesis to the
University of Babahoyo, generates interesting field information in
the Ecuadorian context, which constitutes a valuable contribution on
an experience, set in motion, in terms of the implementation of the
Schoology virtual platform in high school students.
In relation to the studies carried out in the province of Santa Elena,
only one study was identified, carried out by a researcher from the
University of the Armed Forces of Ecuador, Puma-Chadán (2017),
who published his article in the journal Vínculos, entitled "The
English language in the marginal urban areas of Ecuador", This
article is part of a project of linking with society, in which he makes
a diagnosis of several provinces of the Ecuadorian region on the
extent to which students have English proficiency, with a view to
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
40
providing reinforcement workshops that allow better performance
and also achieve better language learning.
In the study, it was observed that there are many difficulties that
students face when learning a new language in the province of Santa
Elena in order to improve their performance in English proficiency.
These difficulties focus on the lack of real opportunities to learn this
language, there is a shortage of teachers, and those who are there do
not have strategies and tools that allow them to innovate or generate
a greater impact on their teaching and learning processes. Finally, he
indicated that in Santa Elena there are educational institutions in the
parish of San José de Ancón, which are supported by the local
government, and diagnoses have been made about the needs that
exist in relation to teachers trained in areas such as English so that
they can meet the demand in the province, as there are many
difficulties that exist, and it has not been possible to teach such a
large demand.
It is important to point out that once the scientific research on the
topic addressed here was traced, it was found that there have been
few studies in Ecuador, at least in the field of education, and they are
more associated with field research reports on the use of new
educational technology, and very few have been published in
indexed journals.
To analyse the feasibility of the application of the LMS Schoology
platform for the development of Level A1 of the English language
in the teaching-learning process of the students of Secondary Basic
Education of the Basic Education School Dr. Herman B Parker of
the San Vicente Commune in the Canton of Santa Elena, in the
province of Santa Elena, Ecuador.
Materials and methods
The present investigation was carried out through the application of
a non-experimental transactional or transversal design, that is to say
that the information was collected at a single moment in order to be
able to analyse the incidence between the variables. Thus, the aim
was to determine the level of English language proficiency of fifth
year EGB students at the Dr. Herman Parker School of Basic
Education.
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
41
In relation to the type, a descriptive research is assumed, being one
in which it is studied how the variables of a research are related to
each other (Boru, 2018). This research is taken because of the need
to present a picture of the state of the variables in relation to the
chosen population.
In consideration of the type of basic research, we worked with a
descriptive level, or also, called descriptive studies, which Fuentes-
Doria, Toscano-Hernández, Malvaceda-Espinoza, Ballesteros, and
Pertuz (2020) indicate that "In descriptive research, an observable
situation or phenomenon is described and possible conditions that
respond to the problem studied are proposed, according to verifiable
information." (p. 57)
In this sense, the main characteristic of this type of research is that
the elements or aspects of the phenomenon or fact studied are
detailed. Under these clarifications, the study to be implemented is
descriptive, because, once the information provided by parents,
teachers and school authorities was obtained, aspects that they
mentioned as having a direct relationship with the variables under
investigation were described.
The sample, according to Fuentes-Doria, Toscano-Hernández,
Malvaceda-Espinoza, Ballesteros, and Pertuz (2020) "the sample is
a portion or subset of the population that the researcher selects as
units or elements for the study in order to obtain reliable and
representative information" (p. 63).
In relation to the sample, it can be indicated that, due to the fact that
the selected population represents a very small number of people, it
was not necessary to apply a mathematical formula to determine the
exact size of the sample, so the number of people for both the
population and the sample was 86 people.
The sample size for the study:
DESCRIPTION QUANTITY
5th year students 80
Teachers of the institution 5
Principal of the institution 1
TOTAL 86
The survey is a research instrument that consists of obtaining
information from people through the use of questionnaires designed
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
42
in advance to obtain specific information (Martínez-Ruiz, 2012, p.
157). This survey required the development of a questionnaire of
questions, which was sent to the subjects under investigation, in this
case, the parents of the fifth year students and the teachers.
In this sense, the survey was chosen as a suitable technique to be
applied to a number of people. This technique was selected for the
convenience that it allows to present it to the person and to answer it
with total tranquillity and freedom, according to his or her criteria.
In the case of this study: due to the health problem in the country,
the instrument was designed using Google Forms.
It should be noted that two questionnaires were developed with
different statements for each population group. These were sent
through the web, and were answered by the representatives and
teachers in a short period of time of three to four days, which were
returned and the answers were generated automatically.
The interview was the second technique selected to collect
information in the study. The interview consists of questioning, with
the help of a guide, a person to obtain information, which is recorded
by the researcher. It can be group, open or closed (Martínez-Ruiz,
2012, p. 157). The individual interview was used for the study.
It is another technique used to complement the information, which
is of a qualitative interpretative order, as it seeks to know the opinion
or perception of one or more people about a fact, object or event, the
point of applying it is to obtain information different from that
collected in the survey and with a greater level of depth and
interpretation of the subject being interviewed, which must be a
person with full knowledge and information on the subject under
investigation.
The interview was applied to the authority of the school, that is, to a
single person, and a semi-structured script of generative questions
was used as an instrument, in which the headmistress responded
openly to the questions.
Results
The process of carrying out the surveys during the course of data
collection did not run into any problems, since the research
instruments were applied virtually in time slots that did not interfere
with the academic activities of any member of the population of the
Dr. Herman B Parker Basic Education School in the San Vicente
Commune.
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
43
After a few days, the respective surveys began to be applied to fifth
year EGB students and teachers of the Educational Institution by
means of an online Google format, which was sent to the groups in
question. In this way, the survey stages were completed and the
results obtained from the different questions were tabulated.
With the information obtained through the surveys, we proceeded to
use the Google Form programme to design the statistical tables by
means of the reports, bar diagrams were drawn up, in order to then
carry out the analysis and interpretation of results, information that
will allow us to specify the description of the research.
The interview carried out allowed us to identify that the Dr. Herman
B Parker Basic Education School in the San Vicente Commune is
using Microsoft Teams as a pedagogical tool granted by the Ministry
of Education, in addition, the activities to be carried out by the
students are sent to WhatsApp; nevertheless, the director affirms the
need that the institution has for new platforms for the use of the
students.
Discussion
The digital educational platform Schoology, during recent times, has
been incorporated with great force in the teaching and learning
process of children, especially, due to the latest health
circumstances, which have generated an educational process
oriented under virtual teaching modalities. In this sense, this
technology is understood as a system for managing children's
learning, which has great benefits, as it is free and easy to access on
the web. In addition, it has tools that help teachers to make their
educational practice more dynamic.
With regard to teachers' knowledge of this platform, few teachers
know how the platform works, as well as its main tools for learning,
as only 40% of those consulted know about it, while 60% said they
did not know about it. It was interpreted in the results that this lack
of knowledge may be related to the time in which the platform has
been introduced, given that these tools have been introduced since
the end of 2020, which allows us to infer that teachers have had little
time to prepare themselves to use it and, above all, to learn about it.
From these analyses, it is clear that in the sector of the province of
Santa Elena there are great logistical difficulties that can be a barrier
to the implementation of this type of project. These difficulties are
associated with several specific aspects:
Sinergias educativas
July - September Vol. 9 – 3 - 2024
http://sinergiaseducativas.mx/index.php/revista/
44
§ There is a need for a better Internet connection in the Educational
Institution.
§ There is a lack of training and education for teachers in the use of
technological tools and applications that can be applied to online
teaching.
§ There are no specialist teachers in the area of English to meet the
demand of students in the province.
§ There is a need for logistical support and the development and
implementation of projects by educational and governmental
bodies to promote the potential of online teaching in these sectors.
If these needs are met and the difficulties are solved, the
implementation of this digital educational platform as part of a local
project in the educational institutions of the Province of Santa Elena
would be possible.
References
Agra, G., Soares, N., Simplicio, P., Lopes, M., Melo, M., & Lima,
M. (febrero de 2019). Análisis del concepto de Aprendizaje
Significativo bajo la luz de la Teoría de Ausubel. doi:
https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7167-2017-0691
Alcívar, C., Vargas, V., Calderón, J., Triviño, C., Santillan, S., Soria,
R., & Cardenas, L. (2019). El uso de las TIC en el proceso de
enseñanza- aprendizaje de los docentes en las Universidades
del Ecuador. Revista Espacio, 1-15.
Anchundia-Bajaña, Y. T. (2017). Plataforma educativa Schoology y
su aporte en el rendimiento académico a los estudiantes del
tercero de Bachillerato de la Unidad Educativa Réplica
"Eugenio Espejo", cantón Babahoyo, provincia Los Ríos".
Recuperado el 19 de febrero de 2021, de Repositorio
Universidad Técnica de Babahoyo:
http://dspace.utb.edu.ec/bitstream/handle/49000/3747/P-
UTB-FCJSE-COMPT-
000057.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Avalos, M. E., Vásquez, L. S., & Pereyra, R. F. (2020). La
Plataforma Schoology en el Aprendizaje de la Matemática en
Estudiantes. INNOVA Research Journal, Vol. 5(No.3), 135-
151. Recuperado el 19 de febrero de 2021, de