Validation of the Smart City as a Sustainable Development Knowledge Tool: The Challenge of Using Technologies in Education during COVID-19

Validation of the Smart City as a Sustainable Development Knowledge Tool: The Challenge of Using Technologies in Education during COVID-19

María del Carmen Olmos Gómez, Mónica Luque Suárez, Jesús Manuel Cuevas-Rincón, Soraya Mohamed-Mohamed

The objective of this research was to design and validate a questionnaire for teachers on the knowledge and use of smart city concepts and their usefulness in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic based on a sustainable approach at different educational levels. It is important to analyze the use of online education based on the construction of intelligent learning environments, which favor the interaction between the environment and the student. With a quasi-experimental methodology, the psychometric properties of the questionnaire were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM), and the model was adjusted through a multivariate regression analysis to relate response patterns to a set of latent factors that cannot be directly observed, but exist in continuous dimensions of the people evaluated, and to create a valid and reliable instrument as a measurement tool using a sample of n = 973 subjects. The sample distribution consisted of 22.36% primary school teachers, 59.01% high school teachers, and 18.56% university teachers. The results showed a high reliability and construct validity through two models, and adjustment of the original model produced better goodness-of-fit parameters. We conclude that the designed questionnaire is a useful and valid tool for understanding how teachers have approached online teaching during the pandemic and their knowledge and use of Smart City concepts.

2020

e-learning, ICT, smart cities, structural equation modeling (SEM), readjustment

10.3390/su12208384

Biotemas

Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Environmental effects of industries and plants, Renewable energy sources, Environmental sciences