Supporting undergraduate students via Webinars

Students are placed in the center of the educational process. Their engagement and support is of great interest in higher education. E-learning provides many different tools to support learning, through increased flexibility, portability and temporal independence. A synchronous technological tool that is used to reinforce the interaction and communication among educators and learners in blended learning is webinars. This study aims to test the use of webinars as supportive tool for undergraduate students. Results showed that students were informed about the webinar mainly through social networks. Almost two out of three students believed that there was interaction during the webinar. Students declared that they intent to use webinars as a supportive educational tool both for their studies and their work, but they did not preferred webinars instead of lessons inside the classroom. Thus, webinars should be used as supplementary and supportive tools in blended learning modules and courses with emphasis on the students´ need for interaction with educator and peers.