Education Tech Research Dev (2023) 71:1709–1724

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-023-10239-8

DEVELOPMENT ARTICLE

Students’ preferences with university teaching practices:

analysis of testimonials with artificial intelligence

Carmen Álvarez‑Álvarez1 · Samuel Falcon2

Accepted: 29 April 2023 / Published online: 16 May 2023

© The Author(s) 2023

Abstract
University teaching practices impact student interest, engagement, and academic perfor-
mance. This paper presents a study that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to examine stu-
dents’ preferences for university teaching practices. We asked students in various fields
open-ended questions about the best teaching practices they had experienced. Due to the
large amount of data obtained, we used the AI-based language model Generative Pretrained
Transformer-3 (GPT-3) to analyse the responses. With this model, we sorted students’ testi-
monies into nine theory-based categories regarding teaching practices. After analysing the
reliability of the classifications conducted by GPT-3, we found that the agreement between
humans was similar to that observed between humans and the AI model, which supported
its reliability. Regarding students’ preferences for teaching practices, the results showed
that students prefer practices that focus on (1) clarity and (2) interaction and relationships.
These results enable the use of AI-based tools that facilitate the analysis of large amounts
of information collected through open methods. At the didactic level, students’ preferences
and demand for clear teaching practices (in which ideas and activities are stated and shown
without ambiguity) that are based on interaction and relationships (between teachers and
students and among students themselves) are demonstrable.

Keywords Teaching practices · Teaching quality · Satisfaction · Higher education ·

Artificial intelligence

* Samuel Falcon
samuel.falcon@ulpgc.es
Carmen Álvarez‑Álvarez
alvarezmc@unican.es
1
Department of Education, Universidad de Cantabria, Avda. de los Castros S/N, 39005 Santander,
Spain
2
Department of Education, University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Calle Juan de Quesada, nº
30, 35001 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Palmas, Spain

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1710 C. Álvarez‑Álvarez, S. Falcon

Introduction

University teaching practices are a major area of interest for educational researchers (Har-
bour et al., 2015; Slavin & Lake, 2008). Teaching practices play a role in stimulating stu-
dents’ interest, engagement, learning, and academic performance (Vercellotti, 2018). A
paradigm shift in university teaching is currently taking place; expository teaching prac-
tices are being questioned and gradually replaced by active methodologies, professional
simulation practices and interactive practices, among others (Carr et al., 2015; Roberts,
2019). However, it is necessary to understand students’ preferences for teaching practices
because they impact the emotional engagement and performance of students (Smith &
Baik, 2021).
A suitable way to assess students’ preferences for teaching practices is through open-
ended questions (Hills et al., 2016). However, the data coding used in this method prevents
working with a large number of samples and requires considerable processing time (Rah-
man, 2016). Currently, these problems can be overcome due to advances in artificial intel-
ligence (AI), as they facilitate and optimise the performance of these tasks (Hirschberg &
Manning, 2015). Employing a language processing model makes it possible to accurately
and efficiently analyse large amounts of text. This, in turn, allows researchers to gain a
deeper understanding of the topic of study and to thus draw more meaningful conclusions
(Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004).
Therefore, the aims of this paper are (1) to assess university students’ preferences for
teaching practices through open-ended questions and (2) to encode the information using
an AI-based tool. In this way, we can assess whether the tool is sufficiently reliable to ana-
lyse data collected through open-ended questions. In addition, this method enables us to
identify which teaching practices are preferred by university students, which could help
researchers and teachers account for these aspects when designing teaching and learning
programmes.
The introduction is divided into two parts. The first part elaborates on the importance of
learner preferences, while the second provides a more detailed description of the AI-based
tools capable of analysing large amounts of text.

Students’ preferences for teaching practices

Previous studies have addressed the need for academic communication that motivates
emotional engagement on the part of university students through the teaching practices
employed by their teachers (Chalmers et al., 2018; Könings et al., 2011; Tronchoni et al.,
2021). Several studies advocate reducing the use of lectures for large groups and employ-
ing active methodologies with regular feedback for students (Carr et al., 2015; Chalmers
et al., 2018; Hardman, 2016; Moliní Fernández & Sánchez-González, 2019; Roberts, 2019;
Steen-Utheim & Wittek, 2017). To date, however, there has been little discussion about
students’ preferences within these methodologies. A study in which the way that students
experience their university classes, how they value their active learning experiences and
what preferences they have in this respect is assessed is needed to maximise their emo-
tional engagement with the subject matter and ensure their success (Alegre & Villar, 2017;
Könings et al., 2011; Slater & Davies, 2020).
Previous studies on students’ preferences have mainly focused on specific areas of
knowledge or specific teaching practices. For instance, Minhas et al. (2012) assessed
the preferences of health students for teaching practices and found a preference for

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Students’ preferences with university teaching practices:… 1711

seminar-based learning over lectures. Another study conducted by Opdecam et al. (2014)
assessed the preferences of first-year university students for teamwork-based activities over
lectures. Their results showed that the students’ preferences clearly differed depending on
gender (women preferred teamwork more than men did), level (students with a lower pro-
file preferred teamwork) and motivation (teamwork had a high acceptance among the most
intrinsically motivated students). Nevertheless, a global understanding of preferred teach-
ing practices in general is lacking.
In regard to the study of students’ preferences, we encounter a major problem: the exist-
ence of different names for similar constructs and similar names for different constructs.
This problem is known as the jingle-jangle fallacy (Marsh, 1994; Marsh et al., 2003) and
leads to confusion, information elusiveness and misinterpretation. To avoid these fallacies,
in this study, we build on the categories identified in a recent systematic review of teaching
practices in universities (Smith & Baik, 2021). The nine categories of teaching practices
applied in this research are as follows:

1. Clarity: Teaching practices in which the structure and content of knowledge are clear
to students. These practices require planning, organisation and structure in the content
and delivery of lectures and practical classes.
2. Research: The use of methodological approaches that encourage problem solving,
enquiry and testing, such as problem- or case-based learning.
3. Application: The conducting of exercises and activities that require the use of knowledge
gained through active learning in different situations or contexts.
4. Experiential: A particular type of application in which practical and experiential, authen-
tic or real learning is developed through the learner’s own experience (e.g., work place-
ments in other institutions).
5. Challenges: Practices meant to achieve interest and deep cognitive engagement through
didactic proposals that challenge students’ thinking, expression, or action.
6. Relevance: A set of teaching practices that highlight the value, purpose or impact of the
interventions to be addressed in a learning or professional development process.
7. Interaction and relationships: A set of communicative and relational processes between
teachers and students and among the students themselves (collaborative learning, peer
tutoring, classroom dialogue, etc.).
8. Consolidation: A set of correction, recovery and revision practices meant to help identify
errors and other comprehension problems to address them correctly and adequately.
9. Self-regulation: Self-assessment and self-monitoring practices conducted independently
by the students themselves to plan, organise and correct their own comprehension errors,
which leads to the achievement of cognitive training and a greater awareness of progress.

These practices capture Smith and Baik’s (2021) findings at a general level of abstrac-
tion. By employing these categories, we can classify the information from student
responses to open-ended questions at a level that can be easily understood by both teachers
and students. In this way, it may be easier to integrate students’ preferred practices into
teachers’ professional performance.

Text analysis with AI

We can take different approaches to answer the question of which teaching practices are
preferred by university students. For instance, some studies attempt to answer this question

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1712 C. Álvarez‑Álvarez, S. Falcon

through the use of self-report questionnaires (Aridah et al., 2017), while others do so
through open collection methods (Hills et al., 2016). Consequently, the method of data
analysis differs. In the first case, the analysis is quantitative and usually performed by using
statistical techniques, while in the second case, the analysis is qualitative and conducted
through content analysis of emerging categories (Cohen et al., 2000; Lodico et al., 2010).
Between these two approaches, the use of open collection methods such as open-ended
questions or interviews facilitates a better expression of ideas among students, allowing
researchers to gain a deeper understanding of the relevant issue (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie,
2004). However, studies following this methodology are often limited in sample size or
data processing time due to the large amounts of collected information that need to be
coded and analysed (Rahman, 2016).
A review of the various studies related to the nine categories of good practice, as identi-
fied by Smith and Baik (2021), shows that, thus far, most studies designed to collect large
amounts of information from a large number of samples used questionnaires or standard-
ised scales as data collection techniques for quantitative analysis (Könings et al., 2011;
Minhas et al., 2012; Opdecam et al., 2014; Vercellotti, 2018). In contrast, most other stud-
ies designed to collect information from a small number of samples or more easily man-
ageable amounts of data used qualitative analysis (Steen-Utheim & Wittek, 2017) and
descriptive statistics (Hardman, 2016). However, another form of data analysis is emerging
thanks to AI.
Advances in AI over the last decade have made it easier to solve problems involving
the processing of large amounts of data across all fields of knowledge. This is especially
notable in biology, where the development of AlphaFold 2, an AI-based tool capable of
predicting the three-dimensional structure of proteins, has been a milestone (Callaway,
2020; Jumper et al., 2021). Since researchers have gained access to this tool, the number
of preprints and scientific publications in the field has increased significantly, as has our
knowledge (Callaway, 2022). Similarly, great achievements are being made in fields related
to textual analysis due to advances in natural language processing (Hirschberg & Manning,
2015).
The use of AI-based tools for textual analysis in education is a practice that has yielded
positive results for a decade. For instance, consider the case of sentiment analysis, which
involves a tool capable of extracting sentiment (positive, negative, or neutral) from large
amounts of text (Rani & Kumar, 2017). Over the last few years, researchers have used this
tool to study students’ evaluations of massive open online courses (MOOCs) and teach-
ers through the use of open-ended questions (Geng et al., 2020; Rybinski & Kopciusze-
wska, 2021; Zhou et al., 2020). Some of this research has concluded that this tool is useful
for course satisfaction evaluations, (Cunningham-Nelson et al., 2019), teaching analysis
(Leong et al., 2012) and course improvement (Pong-inwong & Songpan, 2019). This might
be an effective way to assess students’ preferences for teaching practices, but thanks to the
transformer revolution (Vaswani et al., 2017), a door to the thorough analysis of responses
to open-ended questions has been opened.
Transformers allowed language processing models to shift from being dependent on
human training (in a supervised way) to being trained automatically (or self-supervised)
through large corpora of textual data. This paradigm shift has resulted in large pretrained
models with millions of parameters that are able to understand human language much bet-
ter than their predecessors (Qiu et al., 2020). In this context, models that use deep learn-
ing to understand and generate high-quality text, such as the Generative Pre-trained Trans-
former-3 (GPT-3), have emerged (Floridi & Chiriatti, 2020). GPT-3 has two strengths:
(1) its ability to understand written instructions in natural language (as one person would

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Students’ preferences with university teaching practices:… 1713

speak to another); and (2) its flexibility, since, having been trained only to understand and
generate human-like text, it can perform many tasks for which it has not been specifically
trained. These tasks include classification, sentiment analysis, programming, and textual
summarisation, among many others (OpenAI, 2022). Despite the novelty of these models,
several authors have already expressed a need to use them in the execution of tasks such as
the coding of large amounts of information to then study their reliability (Qiu et al., 2020).
Moreover, by using these novel models, many of the problems associated with the coding
and analysis of information collected through open methods can be overcome.

Objectives of the current study

In this study, using AI (GPT-3), we analysed students’ answers to an open-ended ques-

tion regarding their preferred teaching practices. Furthermore, we identified the university
teaching practices that most satisfy students. The findings will determine whether the reli-
ability results are good enough for the use of this tool in analysing open-ended student
responses. This could open a door for the use of AI-based tools in the analysis of large
amounts of qualitative data. Moreover, by using this method, we can discover students’
preferences for university teaching practices and thus better guide the processes of meth-
odological change.

Methods

Participants

Participants were undergraduate and postgraduate students from 90 classes (42 in the first
term and 48 in the second term) at the University of Cantabria, Spain representing different
disciplines. The total number of respondents was 1081 (601 women and 480 men).

Procedure

We informed both teachers and students of the study objectives, and then we visited each
class so that students could complete the questionnaires. Students completed the surveys
in the classroom under the supervision of the teacher and researchers. These surveys con-
sisted of several scales (Álvarez-Álvarez et al., 2022), but only the open-ended question on
best teaching practices was considered in this study. The data were treated ethically and in
accordance with the guidelines of academic university research, which stipulate confidenti-
ality and objectivity.

Instruments

Teaching practices

Following previous studies in which specific open-ended questions are asked and the
answers are then analysed using AI (Hynninen et al., 2019), we assessed best teaching
practices from a student’s point of view by reviewing responses to the following open-
ended question: “Comment and explain in your own words the best practice you have seen

13
1714 C. Álvarez‑Álvarez, S. Falcon

in this class and explain why you think it is successful in as much detail as you can so that
other teachers can imitate it”.
To code the information collected through the use of the open-ended question, we used
a classification system for teaching practices developed by Smith and Baik (2021) in their
systematic review. This system consists of 9 categories of teaching practices, to which we
added the category “0”, referred to as “none”, to classify student responses stating that
there is no good teaching practice. The resulting rubric is detailed in Table 1.

GPT‑3

We used the GPT-3 model (Brown et al., 2020) to code the responses to our open-ended
question. Specifically, we used text-davinci-002, with the temperature set to 0.1 and the
Top P set to 1. The instructions for the model included the sentence “Classify the com-
ments in one of the following categories:”, followed by the categories defined in the
rubric (Table 1). Afterwards, we provided the answers to the open-ended question for
classification.

Data analysis

To calculate the reliability of the coding conducted with GPT-3, two researchers indepen-
dently coded a random selection equal to 10% of the total sample following the procedure
conducted by other researchers to assess the reliability of coding (Russ, 2018). Both GPT-3
and our coders classified each response into a single category of teaching practices. Reli-
ability was calculated as the percentage of agreement (Brownell et al., 2013; King & La
Paro, 2015) using the ReCal3 tool (Freelon, 2010). After coding students’ responses with
GPT-3, we conducted a descriptive analysis of the results using JASP 0.16.2 (JASP Team,
2022).

Results

Coding reliability

The overall percentage of agreement between the two researchers and GPT-3 was 89.07%,
which is considered satisfactory (O’Connor & Joffe, 2020). Among the various categories,
this overall agreement percentage varied individually from 64.81% for the category “Inter-
action and relationships” to 97.53% for the category “Importance” (Table 2).

Descriptive analysis

The frequency of each category used to classify responses according to the rubric is pre-
sented below (Table 3). In addition, one representative example from each category is
presented.
We can see that there are two categories of teaching practices that stand out, “Inter-
action and relationships” and “Clarity”, in which 30.53% and 28.86% of the responses
were classified, respectively. The next highest ranking categories were “Application”,
with 13.14% of responses classified, “Investigation”, with 10.64%, “Experience”, with

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 Table 1  Rubric used to classify teaching practices. Adapted from Smith and Baik (2021)
Code Name Characteristics Definition

1 Clarity Structure of the content representations, Alignment, Experi- Make the structure of knowledge and the progression of learn-
ence, Relationship ing clear to students. There are three levels: (a) Curriculum
design: clear objectives and alignment between objectives,
activities and assessments; clear organisation of topics
within a subject (“disciplinary content structure”) (b) Les-
son design: clear planning and organisation of content and
activities (c) Delivery: clear explanations and structuring of
content by experts
2 Investigation PBL (problem-based learning), CBL (case-based learning), Use of approaches/methods which aim to encourage question-
active learning, inquiry-based learning ing, problem solving, investigation and testing. Sometimes
referred to as ‘inquiry-based learning’ or ‘active learning’.
Examples of common pedagogical approaches are problem-
based or case-based learning
3 Application Active learning, application of knowledge, flipped class- Engage learners in exercises/activities to apply knowledge and
room, PBL (problem-based learning), CBL (case-based understanding
Students’ preferences with university teaching practices:…

learning)
4 Experience Active learning, PBL (problem-based learning), episodic A particular type of application involving practical and experi-
richness ential learning, sometimes referred to as “authentic learning”
or “real world” practice
5 Challenges Stimulating interest, inquiry-based learning Stimulate interest and foster deep cognitive engagement.
Sometimes mentioned in connection with “inquiry-based
learning” and problem-based learning
6 Importance Value (for learners), Episodic richness, Stimulate interest Helping students to see the value/purpose of what they are
learning. There are two levels: (1) Pedagogical approaches:
experiential learning, problem- or case-based learning. (2)
The way the teacher teaches: e.g., using authentic examples
of disciplinary ideas or constructs for students
7 Interaction and relationships Collaborative learning, Interaction/dialogue, Student–teacher Enable and facilitate peer interaction and learning in a social
relationship, Collaborative assessment, Peer tutoring context; Encourage positive interaction between pupils and
teachers
1715

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 Table 1  (continued)
1716

Code Name Characteristics Definition

13
8 Consolidation Random practice, Examination practice, Remedial practice, Provide appropriate types of remedial and review practice,
Structure of content representations; relationships between where the material to be learned is “made up” during the
ideas study sessions following the first session in which the
material is learned. Consolidate understanding and correct
misconceptions
9 Self-regulation Metacognitive training, Modelling, Awareness of learning/ Facilitating learners’ self-assessment, management of their
progress, Independent learning own learning (e.g. planning, organisation, monitoring, cor-
rective action, revision), learning how to learn and reflecting
on how they come to learn
0 None (added to the original categories) The student considers that there has been no good practice
C. Álvarez‑Álvarez, S. Falcon
 Table 2  Percentage of agreement in coding 10% of the total sample
Teaching practice category code
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 M

Overall agreement percentage 96.91 84.57 90.12 86.42 88.27 96.30 97.53 64.81 91.98 93.83 89.07
Students’ preferences with university teaching practices:…

GPT-3 and researcher 1 95.37 80.56 86.11 82.41 85.19 94.44 96.30 62.96 92.59 92.59 86.85
GPT-3 and researcher 2 99.07 83.33 89.81 85.19 90.74 100.00 98.15 65.74 92.59 93.52 89.81
Researcher 1 and researcher 2 96.30 89.81 94.44 91.67 88.89 94.44 98.15 65.74 90.74 95.37 90.56

M = Mean. The codes correspond to the following categories: 0 = None; 1 = Clarity; 2 = Investigation; 3 = Application; 4 = Experience; 5 = Challenges; 6 = Importance;
7 = Interaction and relationships; 8 = Consolidation; 9 = Self-regulation
1717

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 1718

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Table 3  Frequency of each category of teaching practice
Category of teaching practice Frequency Percentage Representative example

None 25 2.31 Nothing

Clarity 312 28.86 The slides and the teacher’s good method of explanation
Investigation 115 10.64 The clinical cases help to better understand the subject matter
Application 142 13.14 Use of apps or websites where to put into practice concepts of this subject
Experience 77 7.12 The best thing is the lab practicals because that is where I really see what I have been taught in class
Challenges 10 0.93 He asks broad questions that are difficult to answer to make us think things through
Importance 7 0.65 The teacher has included a variety of examples so that we can better internalise the content of the subject.
She gives real examples that have happened or could happen, so that we can think about how we would
react to different experiences
Interaction and relationships 330 30.53 Classroom debate, in which we all participate
Consolidation 26 2.40 The teacher answers all our questions and gives us a daily review of the previous lessons
Self-regulation 37 3.42 Following our contributions to an activity, the teacher intervenes and helps us to work on and understand
them more effectively
Total 1081 100.00
C. Álvarez‑Álvarez, S. Falcon
Students’ preferences with university teaching practices:… 1719

7.12%, “Self-regulation”, with 3.42%, "Consolidation”, with 2.40% and “None”, with
2.31%. Finally, the categories “Challenges” and “Importance” were almost residual,
with 0.93% and 0.65% of responses classified, respectively.

Discussion

The present study aimed (1) to analyse students’ answers to an open-ended question on
their preferred teaching practices using AI (GPT-3); and (2) to identify the university
teaching practices that most satisfy students to better understand their preferences. The
results showed that GPT-3 was able to classify responses to the open-ended question
with a reliability remarkably similar to that of humans. They also showed that univer-
sity students prefer practices that focus on clarity and those that focus on interaction
and relationships. These findings are discussed below.
First, it is necessary to comment on the reliability of the coding performed by the
AI-based model. As claimed by Qiu et al. (2020), one of the remaining challenges
following the recent emergence of large pretrained language models is determin-
ing how to use them to code large amounts of information and then using that cod-
ing information to study their reliability. Surprisingly, the percentage of agreement
between humans was remarkably similar to that between humans and AI, even in the
category with the lowest percentage of agreement. The average percentage of agree-
ment between researchers 1 and 2 was 90.56%, which was not far from that between
researcher 2 and GPT-3 (89.81%) or between researcher 1 and GPT-3 (86.85%). These
findings help overcome the challenge proposed by Qiu et al. (2020) by demonstrating
GPT-3’s usefulness and reliability in coding large amounts of information. This opens
the door to the use of AI-based models for coding and data analysis in other types of
qualitative research. In this way, it will be possible to have a larger number of sam-
ples and shorter analysis times without losing the richness of the information obtained
through open-ended collection methods, which often allow a researcher to reach more
elaborate conclusions (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2007).
Regarding the second objective, the results show a preference for those practices
that focus on (1) clarity and (2) interaction and relationships. Students demand clear
teaching practices where ideas and activities are presented and displayed unambigu-
ously and show order, design, and planning. They also advocate the use of practices
that are based on interaction and relationships (between teachers and students and
among the students themselves) to share their concerns and doubts and to engender
support of their learning processes in university classrooms. It is encouraging to com-
pare these findings with those of Hattie (2008), who, after analysing more than 800
meta-analytic studies, found that effective teachers communicate clear content and
assessment criteria and apply feedback both among students and between teachers and
students. The results of this study also showed students’ preferences for teaching prac-
tices that focus on the investigation and application of knowledge. According to previ-
ous studies, these practices are useful when teaching students (Ambrose et al., 2010).
These findings have implications for university teaching practices, demonstrating stu-
dent interest in clear and active methodologies (Minhas et al., 2012; Opdecam et al.,
2014). University teachers who wish to meet students’ preferences and achieve greater
engagement in their teaching experiences need to rethink both aspects.

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1720 C. Álvarez‑Álvarez, S. Falcon

Limitations and future perspectives

Despite the contributions of this study, it also has some limitations that need to be
addressed. According to a report carried out by UNESCO’s education sector (2019), the
use of AI in educational research incurs several challenges that need to be considered
by researches working with AI. Among them is the creation of inclusive models that are
not biased due to the training of models with inadequate databases. In this study, this
dimension is not considered, but future studies need to test for possible biases in the
use of AI-based models. However, another challenge set by UNESCO is to increase the
use of AI in educational research, so future research should continue to use this type of
model to further explore and enable the advantages of this methodology for researchers.
In addition, the results of this study were obtained using a pretrained base model. This
implies that there is still room for improvement if the model were to be refined with data
that had been previously classified by the researchers.
Another limitation of the current study was that only the preferences of students from
Spain were assessed. Previous research has shown cultural differences in students’ pref-
erences for teaching practices (Macfayden et al., 2003; Yang & Tsai, 2008). A cross-
cultural study that includes teachers from other countries is needed to assess any dif-
ferences in their use of engaging messages. Similarly, the global view followed in this
study prevented us from analysing the results by student attributes such as knowledge
or gender, even when previous studies have shown differences in students’ preferences
across these variables (Opdecam et al., 2014). In future studies, it will be worthwhile to
identify cohort trends in students’ preferences.
Finally, the findings of this research provide insights into the design of future inter-
ventions aimed at modifying university teaching practices. A methodological change in
teaching practices could lead to an improvement in student interest, engagement, and
performance (Smith & Baik, 2021; Vercellotti, 2018). One possible means of achieving
this is through feedback-based interventions that leverage the use of technology (Fal-
con et al., 2023; Rodgers et al., 2019). Students could provide feedback on their pre-
ferred teaching practices, which can be analysed instantly with GPT-3 so that a teacher
can adapt to the preferences of their students. Further research should be undertaken to
explore this possibility.

Conclusions

In the present study, we performed an automatic classification using an AI-based tool of

student responses to open-ended questions regarding their preferences for teaching prac-
tices. We then examined the results to determine which teaching practices are preferred
by university students. First, we found that the reliability of the AI model regarding the
classification task was similar to that of humans. Then, the results showed that students
preferred practices that focus on clarity and those that focus on interaction and relation-
ships. These findings open the door for the use of pretrained text generation models
for large textual analysis and classification tasks. In addition, they provide university
teachers with guidelines for developing their teaching practices. Learning how to better
plan and develop lessons has been and will be a professional challenge for university

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Students’ preferences with university teaching practices:… 1721

teachers, and this study contributes to the identification and categorization of students’
preferences by highlighting the importance of clarity and interaction.
Acknowledgements The authors appreciate the collaboration given in the development of the field work by
the people involved.

Author contributions CÁ-Á: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing—Original Draft,

Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. SF: Formal analysis,
Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing.

Funding Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This
work was supported by the University of Cantabria (Spain) and the funding received within its IV Call for
Teaching Innovation Projects. It has also been funded by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria,
Cabildo de Gran Canaria, and Banco Santander by the pre-doctoral training programme for research
personnel.

Data availability The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corre-
sponding author. These data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.

Declarations
Competing interests The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
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as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com-
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Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

Carmen Álvarez‑Álvarez Carmen is Doctor in Pedagogy and works as a lecturer in the Department of
Education at the University of Cantabria. Her research interests focus on theory–practice relations, school
organisation, reading promotion and rural schools.

Samuel Falcon Samuel is a PhD student at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He is developing
his line of research on the study of secondary school teachers’ messages using AI-based tools.

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