WhatsApp or Telegram. Which is the Best Instant Messaging Tool for the Interaction in Teamwork

Instant Messaging tools are a part of our technified daily life. Tools such as WhatsApp or Telegram have millions of users that send continuously billion of messages. This can be used in different context and one of them is in Education. An important part of education is students’ interaction and specially how they interact when working together as a team. This paper deals with an analysis of which of this tool is better in this specific context, especially when students are developing teamwork competences. To facilitate the analysis of the messages two Learning Analytics tools were developed and applied in the context of a Computer Science degree subject, with an important increment in students’ number of messages regarding previous years but several issues to explore, such as: how to deal with the students that employs other tools different to this for interacting with peers, how to encourage students to employ instant messaging tools as real communication mechanisms, how to measure messages content and not only quantity or how to identify the acquisition of other competences analyzing the conversations.