Representación y aprendizaje de conceptos en Twitter: un análisis de tuits como huellas digitales

The Tweets or messages published on the social network Twitter are understood as digital footprints that are produced by the interaction of people in digital environments. These footprints are generated both in formal education processes such as those conducted through Virtual Learning Environments, as well as in social interaction processes, typical of social media. In this study, the processes of concept representation and learning based on the production of tweets generated by three groups of third and fifth year university students were analyzed. This study of a mixed nature was carried out under the supervised learning approach that included two moments: one of instruction and the other of evaluation. The tweets were analyzed from three categories: content, container and context, as well as from the intellectual operations of conceptual thinking: supra-ordination, exclusion, under-ordination and iso-ordination. Additionally, the emotional tone of the tweets was analyzed using content analysis, text mining and sentiment analysis techniques. The results of the study indicate the possibility that fingerprints can be used as indicators of the processes of representation and learning of concepts, not only from the perspective of the linguistic and cognitive construction involved in learning and representing concepts, but also from the emotional conditions that occur through the interactions within a social network like Twitter. From there, conclusions related to the transformative potential of the use of fingerprints in education are discussed and addressed.