Yosquia
Interactive Learning Resources
Yosquia is a digital space dedicated to learning, experimentation, and critical engagement. The site hosts interactive educational resources created by Juan Carlos Saravia Vargas and José Roberto Saravia Vargas, academics at the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), whose work explores innovative ways of teaching literature and fostering learning and knowledge production in higher education.
Juan Carlos Saravia VargasJuan Carlos Saravia is an English literature professor, poet, and fiction writer. As a poet, he likes to explore existentialism in the information age. He writes short stories and flash fiction, and some of his short stories have been part of different anthologies. He also writes scholarly articles on a variety of topics that include Japanese culture, free/open-source software, theater, and children’ s literature. He coordinated the research projects “Violence as an Agent for Preserving Social Stability: A Comparative Analysis of Human Hunts in Contemporary Cinema and Fiction,” “Trapped in the Dark: The Presence of Children in Gothic Literary Texts, Movies, and Video Games,” and “Tormented Minds: The Representation of Mental Illness of Children and Teenagers in Literary Texts, Movies, and Video Games.”
José Roberto Saravia VargasJosé Roberto Saravia Vargas is an English literature professor, researcher, and fiction writer. His published fiction works include: Segmentos en la vida de un monstruo y otras historias fantásticas (2014), Detective QR y el adorno desaparecido (2016) and Los engranajes del tiempo (2018). Among his literary interests are mythical creatures and the impact of new technologies on human existence. He also writes scholarly articles about literature, English and Japanese teaching, and technology, in special free software. He has been part of several research projects, among them “Non-human gazes: A comparison of social criticism through animal protagonists in literary works” and “Trapped in the Dark: The Presence of Children in Gothic Literary Texts, Movies, and Video Games” as the main researcher and a collaborator, respectively. He coordinated the research project “Changelings in the Cradle: Texts for Adults that Appropriate Aesthetics from Children’s Literature” and collaborated with the project “Tormented Minds: The Representation of Mental Illness of Children and Teenagers in Literary Texts, Movies, and Video Games”.
Yosquia was created as a shared platform to:
Host interactive learning materials for students, educators, and independent learners
Experiment with alternative forms of academic engagement beyond static texts
Support open, accessible, and reflective learning practices
Bridge research, teaching, and digital creativity in meaningful ways
Rather than replacing traditional academic spaces, Yosquia complements them—offering resources that invite users to explore, question, and participate actively in the learning process.
Yosquia is an evolving project. New resources, activities, and experiments are added over time, reflecting ongoing academic work, classroom practice, and pedagogical inquiry. Visitors are invited to engage with the materials openly and to see learning as a dynamic, collaborative process.
