The online student on technical degree courses. Motivation, interests and technical problems

Historically speaking, the profile of a distance university student has been that of a person incorporated into the employment world who cannot attend classes, or that of a person who lives in an area where it is not possible to follow the course face to face. Face to face universities currently also offer online subjects, be they completely in virtual environments or with mixed or semi-face-to-face systems. The latter, together with the great strides in technology and the popularisation of the Internet, has led to the appearance of new student profiles in online training.The motivations, available time and the way of working of each of these profiles is very different. Similarly, differences can be detected between students of disciplines related to Social Sciences and students on technical degree courses. In virtual campuses, which in principle are designed from the point of view of technology, the profiles of the students who will use them must be taken into account.Consequently, we will try to get to the crux of the motivations, interests, problems and preferences of online Engineering students and try to reveal which technological tools and which teaching actions will be the most appropriate for the normal development of learning.