MASTER’S DEGREES IN THE SPANISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM: ASSESSING THE VIRTUALIZATION OF ONLINE COURSES

This paper presents the results of a study on the academic management of online master’s degrees taught at Spanish attendance-based state universities. The study focused on the analysis of the distance learning modality to establish a typology of courses and their degree of virtualization. To gather data, a heuristic test was designed consisting of four fundamental dimensions: type of online learning platform, course description regarding the learning modality, simultaneity with other modalities, and the degree of virtualization. The results show that due to the lack of conceptual clarification, more than 60% of the masters offer a blended modality because they require the physical presence of the student at some point in the learning process.


INTRODUCTION
The Bologna Declaration of 1999 has brought with it profound reforms to the European university system in order to adapt it to the requirements of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) that has paved the way for an innovative teaching and «learning ecosystem» (Álvarez-Arregui et al., 2017). One of the main innovations in Spain is the adoption of a three-tier university education structure: undergraduate, master's, and doctorate degrees, and this marks the first official Moreover, the establishment of the EHEA has served to confer official status to education based on «distance» learning. Spanish universities have been estimated to offer an average 9.02% of non-attendance degrees, which accounted for an average 8.06% of all degrees from these universities (Píriz, 2015). A similar tendency has also been observed worldwide in higher education.
With reference to master's degrees, the official data on the evolution of the In spite of the substantial number of distance master's degrees, the scientific and educational community lacks systematic studies on this mode of education, and has a poor understanding of the process involved in the specific management of these courses and their basic functioning. This underscores the need for an in-depth analysis of the institutional and organizational framework of universities in order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the global context and implications involved in implementing online graduate and postgraduate degrees (Ginsberg, 2011;Knights & Clarke, 2014), in order to overcome specific issues.
The first step is to broaden our systemic understanding of the functioning of online master's courses, in order to determine precisely how Spanish state universities, view online education in terms of the design and implementation of online master's degrees, and to establish a typology of degrees outlining the characteristics that define the different levels of virtual developmen.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
The option of «distance» education is not a new phenomenon. The XX century has witnessed the rapid expansion of distance education (DE) as an alternative designed to replace rigid time-place, attendance-based education. This option allows learners to choose the learning mode that best suits their needs according to their geographical limitations, family and/or work commitments, physical impairment and/or other personal circumstances (Holmberg, 1995;Elliott & Kukula, 2007).
DE can be envisaged in many ways, but essentially the teacher and student are separated in time and space, and both use specific means to communicate with each other in the teaching-learning process. DE materials initially consisted of correspondence courses with written texts and exercises being the most common tools, and through time they have rapidly evolved with Information Communication Technologies (ICT), web 2.0, and semantic web technologies (Domingo & Marquès, 2011;Anderson & Dron, 2011).
The result of implementing ICT to educational and vocational training has given rise to the generic term of e-learning. Nevertheless, there is no definition of elearning broadly accepted by the scientific community due to competing perspectives regarding the concept itself (Sangrà, Vlachopoulos & Cabrera, 2012).
The term (in English usage) is used loosely, alluding to a diverse set of teaching practices, and is commonly employed synonymously with other terminology such as online course/learning, web-based learning, web-based training, distance learning, virtual classrooms, online instruction, distributed learning, and so forth (Ally, 2004;Moore, Dickson & Galyen, 2011). The immaturity of this field of study is reflected in the multitude of terms that attempt to describe the role of ICT in educational and training environments, in the disparity of the often contradictory research results, and in the inability to consolidate the array of findings into a conceptually coherent theoretical framework (García-Aretio, 2014  Ever since the implementation of the first e-learning initiatives, which were until recently mainly based on platforms, significant changes have taken place in terms of both technology and methodology such as the influence of social media on the daily lives and habits of users (Gros & García-Peñalvo, 2016). This has subjected e-learning to an ongoing process of evolution. For García Aretio (2018) the borderline distinguishing face-to-face from distance learning has become progressively blurred throughout the years, and currently both tend to converge and overlap.
Technological developments advance at a rapid pace, and the use of social web tools such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networking have become

RESEARCH METHOD
A descriptive research method was applied using comparative analysis of cases. This method consists of varying a phenomena in order to eliminate variables and secondary factors to derive what is constant and fundamental (Caïs, 1997).
Thus, in line with Grosser (1973, in Nohlen 2006, three steps were undertaken: to make a comprehensible map of online master's degrees through analogy and contrast; to highlight the peculiarities of the map to obtain an in-depth view; and to systematize the phenomena, emphasising the differences and similarities between master's degrees, in particular the varying levels of virtualization. A crucial aspect of this method was defining the proprieties and attributes of the cases under comparison (Castiglioni, 1997). Thus, key concepts were defined and a series of variables capable of «travelling» were established (Sartori, 1970), that is, variables that could be applied to different levels were selected for comparison. For this purpose, a heuristic test was designed (see appendix) consisting of three study dimensions: academic organization, basic characteristics of the degree, and the level of online virtualization.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS OF THE PROFILING OF ONLINE MASTER'S DEGREES: LEVEL OF VIRTUALIZATION OF THE ONLINE COURSE
The data highlight that only 39.74% of the masters were considered to be strict online degrees in terms of not requiring the physical attendance of the student during the teaching-learning process. As for the universities offering more than one degree under the online mode, the data revealed that only the Autónoma de Barcelona, and Jaén University offered all of their masters fully online. In all of the other universities, the online mode was combined with activities requiring mandatory attendance, in particular Rey Juan Carlos University (9 out of 13 masters), and the Jaume I University (4 out of 6 masters).
The field of knowledge with the most full online degrees were Social Sciences and Law, Humanities, and Health Sciences with 12, 9, and 5 degrees, respectively.
However, this distribution differed considerably in the case of interuniversity degrees, where the number of Humanities masters remained constant at 9 degrees, but Social Sciences and Law dropped to 9 degrees, and Health Sciences to 2.
Similarly, differences in the distribution were also observed in the percentages of full and partial online master's degrees in each field of knowledge. As shown in Figure 1, though Social Sciences and Law were the fields of knowledge accounting for most of the online master's degrees, they were also the fields of knowledge with the lowest percentage of full online degrees in relation the total number of master's degrees offered. Thus, 12 of 38 degrees, that is, only 31.6% of the masters were fully online degrees. As for the Humanities, more than half of the masters were full online degrees (9 out of 17), whilst for the Social Sciences only 2 masters were full online degrees. «online» in 40.26% of the masters, followed by «virtual» (20.78%), and «distance» (20.78%). It is worth noting that 14.29% of the masters were described using a variety of terms such as «non-attendance», «online», «virtual» and/or «distance» ( Figure 2). Thus, if we examine the descriptors of the mode of online education of the master's degrees in relation to the field of knowledge, the term «online» was most frequent in masters in Social Sciences and Law, whereas the terms «online» and «virtual» were more common in the Humanities and Health Sciences.
As for learning platforms, 70.51% of the master's used the Moodle platform for managing the teaching-learning process, and this figure rose to 84% for masters under the full online mode. In comparison, the impact of other platforms such as Sakai or Blackboard Learning Sys was small, 10.26% and 6.41% of cases, respectively.
In terms of the level of student attendance, 39.74% were full online masters, whereas most online masters (60.36%) required the student's physical presence.
As a general rule, attendance was required in more than one activity, which was mainly the Defence of the Thesis (DT) (37.2%), followed by internships (30.8%), and specific evaluation activities (20.6%). Of a total of 23 master's degrees, only 8 required the attendance of the students in one activity, primarily the Defence of the

Thesis DT (3 masters), internships (3 masters), and other activities (2 masters).
The master's degrees in Social Sciences or Law accounted for most of the cases requiring student attendance in all of the three types of activities under examination. However, internships were most frequent in Social Sciences and Law degrees (61.5%), primarily Law (5), and education (4); and the DT was most frequent in masters in Health Sciences (88.9%), and Humanities (87.5%).
Finally, the data revealed that 34.62% of masters had an overlapping online mode consisting of an attendance (23.08%), or semi-attendance mode (8.97%), or both simultaneously (2.56%). Thus, there was a small difference between full online masters (35.48%), and partial online masters (34.04%). As for the full online masters (31), 6 degrees had an overlapping online mode of attendance, 4 semi-attendance, and 1 both simultaneously. The partial online master's degrees followed the same pattern, 12 an overlapping online mode of attendance, 3 semi-attendance, and 1 both simultaneously.

DISCUSSION
The In spite of describing their degrees as «virtual» or «distance» in the university prospectus, and professing to be «online» on the university websites, this mode of education was partially implemented in more than 60 % of cases that require student attendance at some stage of the learning process, primarily for evaluation. Far from shedding light on the meaning of either learning mode, both definitions contribute to generate further confusion by placing the «distance» mode within the boundaries of semi-attendance by explicitly admitting that some «learning activities» may be carried out, without specifying the type or number that may effectively compromise the student's physical attendance.
The The data from the three public information sources examined in this study (university websites, the prospectuses of the masters obtained from ANECA, and the RUCT database) revealed several inconsistencies in the presentation and use of terminology. Whereas, in most cases the public information on each masters in the university prospectuses obtained from ANECA was presented clearly, systematically, and ordered, in line with the RUCT database. However, the same was not true of the information provided on websites, which was presumably the main means for accessing future students, but was often found to be disorganized, fragmented, not intuitively accessible, and occasionally duplicated.
This may explain the discrepancy in the results obtained in the descriptors of the masters. Therefore, in the university prospectus obtained from ANECA and RUCT a homogeneous criterion was applied limiting to four the terms used to define the learning mode: "virtual" (39.74%), "distance" (32.05%), "online" (6.4%), and "nonattendance" (2.5%). In contrast, the websites of the master's degrees and the university websites showed substantial inconsistencies (up to 10 combinations) to define the learning mode of each masters. The highest percentage was for «Online» with 40.26% of cases (which did not correspond with the most frequently used term in the prospectuses «virtual» in 39.74% of cases), followed by "virtual" and "distance" (both 20.78%), and much lower percentages for the terms "non-attendance" (3.9%), and combinations or the indiscriminate use of both terms.
In Undoubtedly, this clarification is essential given that the use of the term e-learning not only differs from one university system to another, but also differs within the same system itself, such as the The present study has shown that the main variable influencing the level of virtualization of the masters was the level of student attendance in specific evaluation activities, either in the evaluation of competences in subjects, the defence of the thesis, or internships.
Thus, three levels of virtualization of master's degrees in the Spanish university system were identified according to the level of student attendance in the evaluation activities:  High virtualisation. Masters degrees where the learning-teaching process did not require the physical attendance of the student to undertake the main evaluation  Social Sciences, Law, Humanities, and Health Sciences were the areas of knowledge with the most online masters.
 The physical presence of student was primarily required for evaluation activities: exams, the defence of the thesis, and internships.
As for the analysis of the three main sources of information on the official masters (websites, university prospectuses from ANECA, and the RUCT database) have revealed certain inconsistencies in the presentation and use of terminology regarding e-learning. Though, the public information on the masters were presented clearly, systematically, and orderly in the prospectuses from ANECA in line with the RUCT database, the same was not true of the information presented in websites, which was often haphazard and hardly intuitively accessible.
The results of this study corroborated the incoherent and inconsistent use of terminology referring to online learning at Spanish state universities ("Virtual", "online", "distance", "non-attendance"), and this confusion was further exacerbated in the websites of each masters, which heightened the lack of any consensus or criterion in the definitions.
Moreover, the level of student attendance in certain evaluation activities was found to be the principal variable influencing the level of virtualization of the master's degrees. Thus, three levels of virtualization of masters in the public Spanish university system were identified: high virtualization not requiring the students' physical presence to undertake the main evaluation activities; intermediate virtualization, where the teaching-learning process and the evaluation were completely online, with the exception of the defence of the thesis and the internships; and low virtualization, where online learning involved access to contents, resources and activities, but attendance was required for evaluation activities, the defence of the thesis, and internships.
Finally, this study has identified certain shortcomings in the state institutions supervising the quality of Spanish universities such as ANECA's failure to clearly distinguish the different learning modes, and the lack of guidelines for universities regarding attendance, and on how to approach the complex process of designing and implementing non-attendance courses, which have led to an array of scenarios that come into conflict with online education.
Finally, this study has identified certain shortcomings in the state institutions supervising the quality of Spanish universities such as ANECA's failure to clearly distinguish the different learning modes, and the lack of guidelines for universities regarding attendance, and on how to approach the complex process of designing and implementing non-attendance courses, which have led to an array of scenarios that come into conflict with online education.