THE VARIABLE “T” IN OVERCOMING THE
CONFRONTATION OF PRESENTIAL VS
ONLINE TRAINING: MECHANICS OF GENERAL
RELATIVITY AND CONTINUING
KNOWLEDGE-TIME
Martínez López, Francisco José
Universidad de Huelva, Grupo de Investigación GITICE
Huelva, Spain
francis@uhu.es
Fernando Lombos Fernández
Fundación Certiuni
Madrid, Spain
fernando@ferlom.com
Abstract— The time variable “T” has been rarely used in
educational research, and when it has been, it has been limited to
seeing it as a linear, almost immovable sequence. In this work we
present a new vision on how to contemplate the time variable
"T" in training, both in the online and face-to-face modes, and to
mark the parallels with other sciences such as physics when time
was included in the theory of relativity . In the future, time will
be one of the factors that will be most taken into account when
designing training programs.
Keywords— Time variable “T”, evaluation, presential vs online
training, continuing knowledge-time.
I. INTRODUCTION
The virtual teaching versus face-to-face teaching
confrontation seems already to be overcome. Now, what it is
about is to take advantage of the advantages of each of them,
since they will coexist in the future, this process has
accelerated after the COVID 19 pandemic.
One factor to be taken into account is the time required to
acquire knowledge and skills and see if faster results can be
achieved in one type of teaching or the other. The variable “T”
of time will be decisive in tipping the balance for one or
another educational system and it will become the workhorse
of the next few years.
Inmacualda Puebla Sánchez
Universidad Francisco de Vitoria
Madrid, Spain
i.puebla.prof@ufv.es
García Ordaz, Mercedes
Universidad de Huelva, Grupo de Investigación GITICE
Huelva, Spain
francis@uhu.es
Time has not been sufficiently studied as a determining
factor to establish one educational system or another. The same
happened in other sciences such as physics in which the time
variable was not considered until it was concluded that it was
determining and affected all the others.
II. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM: JUSTIFICATION OF THE
VARIABLE “T”
In educational research, the time variable is hardly taken
into account, and if it is done it is linear and not adaptable to
each of the other variables that are usually analyzed. As
Serdyukov and Serdyukova [1] have indicated, the academic
literature on this subject is scarce. That is why authors such as
Barbera, Gros and Kirschner [2] have categorically said “few
articles during the last decade have paid due attention to time.
There is some acceptance of time constraints as a factor within
which educators must take into account as part of the process
without paying attention to time as a variable in educational
development”.
Studying the current panorama of development of
competency training, notable deficiencies are noted in the
current approach generally accepted and that make plausible
the absence of a new approach and treatment of the relevant
final object, the "student" and of the possible actions towards
new models on training.
 In general, the only variable that we never move is time,
“T”, which remains constant, linear, normally in training hours
(Papamitsiou and Economides [3], without its application being
relative depending on the teaching methodology. This fact
being omnipresent, we ask ourselves: Why haven't we already
turned it into another variable?
The students show in an obvious way and in many cases
that they need adaptive variations with respect to the variable
"T", especially related to the competency training unit and not
to the total training. That is, about the parts, which makes it a
very interesting concept for training, since in the end they do
dominate some area, we also need to be able to reduce the
variable "T" and in cases of great difficulty in a specific area
with that competition can be expanded.
The very consideration of the elasticity of the variable "T"
and stop understanding it as a factor in the form of a static and
rigid constant that always remains linear and that is alien to us
observers and also towards the observed object, the student and
his / her evaluation.
This new conception leads us to understand a new
evolutionary and revolutionary concept, very demanding and
that belongs to the concept of Classroom and Training of the
21st century.
It is necessary to clearly identify all the dimensions of the
problem for which it is necessary to discuss the descriptive
taxonomy of the new framework of knowledge generated. We
need to determine the categories and the new descriptors
necessary to be able to refer to the previous concepts and
especially to the new ones, to avoid confusion that we suspect
will be common, being an essential reason for research in this
field in the coming years.
Gimeno [4] established that there are dimensions of time in
education that must be analyzed, such as the physical-
mathematical, biopsychic, social and experiential dimensions,
and Infante, Infante, Martínez and García [5] have related the
time variable with the learning of digital skills in the business
environment and their interaction with the possible variations
on the training modules and clearly determine the differences
between the implications resulting from a change of model
from Constant to Variable of "T".
All of this leads us to consider that Competency Education
has to be measured on the constant "T" and be relative to all
KPI's (Key Performance Indicator) related to the Student's
abilities. descriptive study and determination of the guiding
principles of the new Mechanics of General Competent
Relativity, so that we can work in a new dimension that we call
"Knowledge / Time".
III. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
We think that at the current historical moment we have to
make an inductive association on the similarity between our
state of the art on the knowledge of competence training and
the momentum in which Einstein explained the Concept of
General / Special Relativity to us and confronted them with the
existing concepts of Newton's Classical Mechanics.
It was necessary to explain why time "T" could not be an
independent linear constant and that this was not only a relative
variable, but is associated with the object studied, generating a
kind of variable "T" of its own.
We understand that this problem is the same that happens to
Competency Education in relation to the student. In the
acquired competencies, the KPIs, metrics are sought to
determine the efficiency and productivity and must take into
account the time variable "T". We must not restrict the training
with a linear and constant time variable, which is given to us
from the conceptual framework of the 19th century classroom.
Already Barbera, Gros and Kirschner [6], have shown that
it is necessary to take time into account not only in research at
the micro level, but also at the meso (that is, curricular) and
macro (that is, organizational) level and understand the impact
of innovation on curricular and organizational change, for
which research is needed to effectively improve methods that
can provide evidence of growth over time, Ahmad et al. [7],
especially in the adoption and implementation of ICT. All this
leads many authors (Mustafa, Nordin and Razzaq, [8]) to
consider that time is one of the aspects that needs an explicit
treatment and presence in the design of learning.
In the 21st century classroom, everything is relative
(Reimann, [9]), everything is governed by the interactions of
the General Relativity model, which rests on the concept of the
continuum "Knowledge / Time", in a similar way that
happened with Space / Time for Einstein and that he could get
rid of the previous model of Newton's Classical Mechanics
until Einstein / Rostein could develop conceptually the Concept
of Special Relativity and the relative movements in space and
how these affect the variable "t" and that no longer it is then
considered a linear constant factor independent of the model.
Therefore, the Constant and independent Factor “T” is not
well characterized historically in the framework of competence
training and consequently presents us with serious problems
regarding the current conceptual framework under
development. This happens because it is really an elastic
concept, a variable not associated with the Training or the
Competency Training Unit, but rather a variable proper to the
final object of the training, the student and their skills, which
we call the “Continuous Knowledge / Time ".
We also want to demonstrate that it is possible to
parameterize, control and consolidate it as an objective and
robust system, perfectly usable. This model makes sense as it
parallels the studies and trend that has naturally been imposed
in advanced environments based on merit and ability.
Now we can definitively break the suffocating point of
union that exists with the previous framework of the 19th
century, which constantly subjects our educational and training
systems to significant stress. Thus arises a new theory
assimilated to Mechanics / Physics and that we call as
"Mechanics of General Competency Relativity" where the
previous training objective element, the Competency Training
Unit, enters into serious formal expositional questioning and
works directly on the student, his Previous skills acquired, the
knowledge they have, their ability to associate and put them in
relation to the previous ones.
From all this a new concept arises that we call "the
Competency-Temporal line" and that is associated with the
student himself and that behaves in a relative way with all the
other variables that can be studied and that we can already
massively convert into the observable KPI's that we need.
With this system those systems that are organizationally
flawed by patronage, the tendency to superficiality and
bureaucratic simplification and the phenomenon of "titulitis"
are improved. The problem of the tendency is also solved in
some educational leaders who flee from complexity and
strategy sheltered in the comfort of the previous conceptual
framework based on partial linearity and short-termism.
This new theory provides possibilities and fields that we
now find credible and that can bring great changes, especially
in the speed of development of educational systems. Some
subsequent contributions that we find especially interesting,
such as "Competent Quantum Mechanics" resulting from
Competent General Relativity.
IV. VARIABLE “T” AND TRANSMISSION OF DATA,
INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE
TRANSITION FROM TEACHING TO LEARNING
The European Union decided to change the entire European
Higher Education System from a system based on teacher
teaching to students to one in which student learning prevails.
To do this, she created the European Higher Education Area
and to allow comparisons of degrees and facilitate mobility she
devised a system for measuring time in education which she
called ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) credit. It was
decided to go from the time system based on the fact that one
credit was equivalent to 10 class hours to another, based on the
student's work, previously that of the teacher, quantifiable in 25
hours of student work per ECTS credit.
This path was already important, but it continued with a
linear system and did not delve into that variable "T" which
may be different depending on the teaching methodology or the
students' study techniques.
Serdyukov and Serdyukova [10] already speak that time is
a critical factor in the evaluation of learning, so that
educational centers, including universities, will be selected and
appreciated not only for the quality of education they provide,
but also by the time it takes to learn, Bennett & Burke [11].
Therefore, we must guide educational research towards
intensive and accelerated techniques and methodologies,
Sobocinski, Malmberg and Järvelä [12], which include a
greater participation of the intellectual and emotional capacities
of the student that include the “T” factor as a crucial element, a
catalyst that improves and accelerates the creation of
knowledge that is generated in the learning process (Romero
and Barbera, [13]).
Virtual teaching competes with face-to-face training in
these times of change in the educational system caused by the
COVID 19 pandemic. It is time to take the opportunity to
change teaching methodologies (Barbera, [14]), and include
new elements such as the variable "T" in the equation of the
teaching-learning process.
At the beginning, educational systems were based on
working with data that students learned, almost by heart, then
they moved on to a system based on the transmission of
information, where the data already acquires a concrete
meaning that the student learns. Today, we have gone one step
further and we are talking about the transmission not only of
information, but of knowledge, that is, the experience based on
the consumption of information over time. At first it was
thought that knowledge could not be taught, and it was shown
that it can be (Infante, Infante, Gallardo, Martínez and García,
[15]). Today the challenge is to do so by minimizing the
variable "T".
An interesting debate that is often raised is whether there is
data, information or knowledge on the Internet. Data is all the
elements contained in the Internet, information that makes
sense, that is, almost everything, for example, Wikipedia. But
is there knowledge? The answer is a resounding yes. For
example, if I want to make a complex meal I can see a recipe,
but maybe it lacks the expert touch. Then, you can see a video
on YouTube where a person who has been preparing that food
all his life teaches us his experience, that is, he has given us
knowledge. Now the challenge is to do so by relativizing the
time factor "T".
V. CONCLUSIONES
It is the moment that when designing and planning training
itineraries and processes we take into account the time factor
"T", as it is going to become a variable part of the knowledge
transmission equation.
Time will determine the success or failure of a formative
experience (Barbera [16]), as it has been in other scientific
fields such as physics with general relativity, and it will be an
almost natural selection factor for the teaching-learning
methodology to be used. implantation in the future, which will
be based on new models such as that of "Competent Quantum
Mechanics"
In addition, it is an element that affects both face-to-face
and online teaching and we believe that it will be the
differential factor so that we can accelerate training in an
information and knowledge society that imposes new ways of
transmitting wisdom. behind the data and information.
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