Last modified: 2014-05-01
Abstract
It is argued the need to reform structures and forms of organization at the universities to meet the challenges of a changing world where developments in science and technology demanded that the University offering should be more qualified and to respond to the challenge of developing knowledge and skills for lifelong learning. Thus, understanding the role that play the systems of beliefs about knowledge (whether epistemological or not), inasmuch as understanding the mechanisms that use the cognitive heuristics and self-regulating responsible for University Learning, it constitutes a central focus of evaluation and intervention in higher education, so that experts can help students to exercise their personal influence in the performance of an active role in their self-development. Based on this sense of academic Agency, the article offers a global perspective on it and describes the development, calibration and validation of standardized artifacts to evaluate both cognitive mechanisms (beliefs and cognitive heuristics), self-regulation (affective and motivational), insofar as they constitute core components in determining the quality of complex agentive nature learning. Finally, we introduce the development of an evaluative web tool that enhances the impact of the technological artifacts by extending the benefits of web applications to diagnosis and foster Cognitive Development and Complex learning. In this context, besides academic agency evaluating web tool, further developments in learning supported by mobile technology will be developed.