An investigation of student practices in asynchronous computer conferencing courses

This study investigated the online practices of students enrolled in graduate-level distance education courses. Using interviews and a questionnaire as data sources, the study sought to: (a) identify common practices that students adopt in asynchronous discussions, and (b) gain an understanding of why students adopt them. An analysis of the data suggests that many of the practices are coping mechanisms developed to help students more easily meet course participation requirements. Some of these are time saving strategies designed to reduce information overload (e.g., skimming messages rather than reading them carefully). Other strategies are designed to help students project an image of themselves as knowledgeable and collaborative course participants. It is argued that although these practices provide students with a level of efficiency in terms of meeting course requirements, they may inadvertently undermine learning.     

Impact of media richness and flow on e-learning technology acceptance

Advances in e-learning technologies parallels a general increase in sophistication by computer users. The use of just one theory or model, such as the technology acceptance model, is no longer sufficient to study the intended use of e-learning systems. Rather, a combination of theories must be integrated in order to fully capture the complexity of e-learners, who are both system users and learners. The current research presents an integrated theoretical framework to study users’ acceptance of streaming media for e-learning. Three streams of research provide the basis for this integrated framework: the technology acceptance model, flow theory and media richness theory. Students enrolled in an online section of an information systems course used one of three different combinations of text, streamed audio and streamed video. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses in this field experiment. Perceived ease of use was a predictor of perceived usefulness; both the perceived usefulness and the attitude of the user were predictors of intention to use. Richer content-presentation types were positively correlated with higher concentration levels but showed mixed results when correlated with perceived usefulness. Results from this study have practical implications for those interested in integrating streaming media into e-learning.     

Research in online learning environments: Priorities and methodologies

Due to increasing demand for education and training in the information age, online learning and teaching is becoming a necessity in our future. However, lack of research goals to understand impact of online learning environments on students is a problem in research on online learning environments. We identified four main research goals to pursue in online learning environments based on their impact on learner achievement, engagement, and retention (opposite of attrition). Those goals are (a) enhancing learner engagement & collaboration, (b) promoting effective facilitation, (c) developing assessment techniques, and (d) designing faculty development programs. Current promising work in those areas is presented. Four methods that are common in the instructional technology literature are recommended to pursue those goals. Formative research and developmental research are relevant for all four. Although appropriate for any of the goals, experimental research is a better fit for goals b and c, and activity theory is useful for goals a and b.     

The influence of system characteristics on e-learning use

The benefits of an e-learning system will not be maximized unless learners use the system. This study proposed and tested alternative models that seek to explain student intention to use an e-learning system when the system is used as a supplementary learning tool within a traditional class or a stand-alone distance education method. The models integrated determinants from the well-established technology acceptance model as well as system and participant characteristics cited in the research literature. Following a demonstration and use phase of the e-learning system, data were collected from 259 college students. Structural equation modeling provided better support for a model that hypothesized stronger effects of system characteristics on e-learning system use. Implications for both researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

Is the unfolding of the group discussion off-pattern? Improving coordination support in educational forums using mobile devices

A forum is a valuable tool to foster reflection in an in-depth discussion; however, it forces the course mediator to continually pay close attention in order to coordinate learners’ activities. Moreover, monitoring a forum is time consuming given that it is impossible to know in advance when new messages are going to be posted. Additionally, a forum may be inactive for a long period and suddenly receive a burst of messages forcing forum mediators to frequently log on in order to know how the discussion is unfolding to intervene whenever it is necessary. Mediators also need to deal with a large amount of messages to identify off-pattern situations. This work presents a piece of action research that investigates how to improve coordination support in a forum using mobile devices for mitigating mediator’s difficulties in following the status of a forum. Based on summarized information extracted from message meta-data, mediators consult visual information summaries on PDAs and receive textual notifications in their mobile phone. This investigation revealed that mediators used the mobile-based coordination support to keep informed on what is taking place within the forum without the need to log on their desktop computer.     

Creative use of podcasting in higher education and its effect on competitive agency

This paper describes an academic experience of podcasting, which involved a group of students of a course on multimedia communication and human–computer interaction. These students acted both as users of the university’s podcasting service, and as creators of podcasted lessons. A comprehensive analysis based on the evaluation of the effects on student performance, on data from student satisfaction surveys, from interviews and from instructors’ observations provided encouraging results: Full-time students co-involved in lessons’ podcasting outperformed colleagues of the previous years and achieved higher levels of what we define as competitive agency, that led them to better understand the theoretical issues of the course and to more effective practical skills.     

Place presence, social presence, co-presence, and satisfaction in virtual worlds

This study investigated the relationship among three types of presences, including place presence, social presence, and co-presence in virtual worlds and their relationship with satisfaction and immersive tendencies of students. Students’ scores on a subjective questionnaire were analyzed. The results indicated that there was a significant relationship among the place presence, social presence, and co-presence. While social presence seemed to affect the satisfaction most, place and co-presence also affected students’ satisfaction in the virtual world. Moreover, immersive tendencies of the students were related to their place and co-presence but not to their social presence. Findings highlighted the important issues for the design of virtual world environments to increase presence and satisfaction of students.     

Psychological safety and social support in groupware adoption: A multi-level assessment in education

In this paper, the authors propose that psychological safety, a sense of interpersonal trust and being valued in a work team, is an important determinant of groupware technology adoption in an educational setting. They develop and test a model of antecedents and consequences of psychological safety. Data were collected from 361 university students, organized in 36 teams. Results of multi-level regression analysis reveal positive individual-level effects of perceived tutor support and perceived peer support on psychological safety. Furthermore, our findings show a positive unique group-level effect of perceived tutor support on psychological safety, where an individual’s level of self-consciousness strengthens this positive impact. In addition, findings of structural equation modeling demonstrate that both perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use partially mediate the positive effect of psychological safety on groupware usage. Psychological safety also shows a positive direct effect on groupware usage. Finally, a student’s offline communication frequency with his tutor and peers appears to strengthen the impact of psychological safety on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and groupware usage.     

University students' Motivated Attention and use of regulation strategies on social media

The Internet has become a major platform for learning in higher education. Besides rich informational resources, however, the Internet offers an abundance of distractors that challenge students' attention. This study investigated university students' perceived attention state and use of regulatory strategies using the Online Learning Motivated Attention and Regulatory Strategies scale (OL-MARS). Participants were 230 undergraduate and graduate students recruited from two universities located in central and northern Taiwan. The exploratory factor analysis revealed four subscales in the OL-MARS, including perceived attention discontinuity, social media notification, behavioral strategies, and mental strategies. Results showed that mental and behavioral strategies were positively associated with criterion variables, including Internet self-efficacy, online search strategies, and final course grades, but negatively correlated with time spent on the Internet and social media. Whereas, perceived attention discontinuity and social media notification mostly had a modest correlational relationship with these validating variables in an opposite direction. Cluster analysis identified five types of profiles: the Motivated Strategic, the Unaware, the Hanging On, the Non-Responsive and the Self-Disciplined. Group membership exhibited mean differences in Internet self-efficacy, online search strategies, final course grades, and time spent on the Internet and social media. The study results validated the constructs in meta-attention for theory development, provided the OL-MARS scale as an effective meta-attention measurement tool to assess university students’ knowledge of attention and regulation of attention, and proposed the specific intervention and attention regulation training for each profile group.     

A validity and reliability study of the Online Cooperative Learning Attitude Scale (OCLAS)

Determination of students' attitudes towards online cooperative learning is an important issue, which has not been studied adequately. In the literature, there are few scales to measure the attitude towards online cooperative learning for which validity and reliability have been proven. The main purpose of this study is to develop an attitude scale in order to specify students' attitudes towards online cooperative learning. The sample group is composed of 599 students for the first application and 242 students for the second. In order to detect the validity of the scale, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, item factor total correlations, corrected correlations and item discriminations were conducted. In order to assess the reliability of the scale, the level of internal consistency and the stability levels were calculated. OCLAS is a five-point Likert-type scale and includes 17 items that can be gathered under 2 factors. The analyses provided evidence that the Online Cooperative Learning Attitude Scale (OCLAS) is a valid and reliable scale that can be used in order to determine students' attitudes towards cooperative learning in online environments.     

Level of abstraction and feelings of presence in virtual space: Business English negotiation in Open Wonderland

Virtual spaces allow abstract representations of reality that not only encourage student self-directed learning but also reinforce core content of the learning objective through visual metaphors not reproducible in the physical world. One of the advantages of such a space is the ability to escape the restrictions of the physical classroom, yet reproduction of reality may surpass what is needed to encourage feelings of presence. Simultaneously, too high an abstraction level may change participants’ attitudes in relation to the core learning goals. This quantitative study examined the relationship between level of environment abstraction, within a virtual space, and feelings of presence for business negotiation role playing. Negotiation values were also measured, in relation to environment abstraction. Two levels of virtual space abstraction were implemented, through the open source software Open Wonderland, where class lectures and student driven negotiation role playing took place over a semester. Results indicated a high abstract environment reduced feelings of presence compared to a low abstract environment, even when the low abstract level was not realistic but rather employing a metaphor related to instructional goals. The values students used in negotiation across the two abstraction levels exhibited no difference, indicating the fundamental approach to negotiating was not related to the virtual environment design.     

The impact of media on collaborative learning in virtual settings: The perspective of social construction

This study examines an alternative function of information sharing – social construction of meaning. Drawing on social construction, social interaction, and task closure theories, we explored the influence of both the media environment in which students are situated and the medium that group members choose to communicate with one another on the intricate relationships among breadth of information sharing, depth of information sharing, and performance of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). A total of 126 students participated in the experiment – including 63 students (15 groups of four students and one group of three students) in the control and experimental groups respectively. Our findings show that most of the proposed hypotheses are supported. Intersubjective interpretation underlies groups information sharing and plays a key role in student learning performance. Evidence shows that when facing a relatively complex task in multimedia environments, students who choose to utilize a medium lower in social presence (i.e., electronic information sharing) are more likely to achieve task closure than a medium higher in social presence (i.e., verbal information sharing). This in turn leads to higher learning performance. The implications for both theory and pedagogy are also discussed.     

The relationship between class size and online activity patterns in asynchronous computer conferencing environments

This study analyzes the relationship between class size and student online activity patterns in a series of 28 graduate level computer conferencing courses. Quantitative analyses of note production, average note size, note opening and note reading percentages found a significant positive correlation between class size and mean number of notes generated. Significant negative correlations were found between class size and average note size and between class size and percent of notes opened. Analyses of average reading speeds among large classes and small classes revealed that students in large classes were more likely to scan lengthy notes (i.e., notes that contain more than 350 words). Possible explanations for these results are discussed.     

Investigating cooperation and collaboration in near synchronous computer mediated conferences

The development and use of computer mediated communications as a tool for teaching and learning has grown considerably in recent years. It has been developed to extend the conventional face-to-face tutorial environment and for distance-learning purposes, actively engaging students in productive learning situations. Here we document the findings of an analysis of near synchronous conferencing where postgraduate distance learners worked in small groups to produce a report that examined media coverage of controversial science. The results suggest that students actively engaged in both cooperative and collaborative learning in preparing and producing these reports, and that tutor interventions were an important factor in influencing peer interaction. Furthermore, we have found evidence of cooperation between learners who passively participate in vicarious learning. We consider the implications of these findings with respect to current definitions of cooperation and collaboration.     

The effects of education compatibility and technological expectancy on e-learning acceptance

Discerning what influences a student’s acceptance of e-learning is still unclear and has not been well investigated. On the basis of the expectancy-value theory, much effort has been put into identifying the effectual factors regarding the technological expectancy of students. However, aside from technological usage, the adoption of an e-learning system still must consider learning behavior. Thus, researchers should take into consideration both technological and learning expectancies of students while investigating e-learning acceptance. Following mainstream literature on information system acceptance, this study postulates that a student’s behavioral intention to accept an e-learning system is determined both by his or her technological expectancy and educational compatibility. Four primary factors, that is, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions, specified in the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) are used to reflect the technological expectancy of students. Further, educational compatibility, which refers the congruence of e-learning systems with the unique leaning expectancies of students, is integrated with the UTAUT to form a new theoretical model for e-learning acceptance. An empirical survey is conducted to examine the proposed model. A total of 626 valid samples were collected from the users of an e-learning system. The findings show that both technological expectancy and educational compatibility are important determinants of e-learning acceptance. However, educational compatibility reveals a greater total effect on e-learning acceptance than does technological expectancy. Implications and practical guidelines for both e-learning developers and practitioners are subsequently presented.     

iTunes University and the classroom: Can podcasts replace Professors?

iTunes University, a website with downloadable educational podcasts, can provide students the opportunity to obtain professors’ lectures when students are unable to attend class. To determine the effectiveness of audio lectures in higher education, undergraduate general psychology students participated in one of two conditions. In the lecture condition, participants listened to a 25-min lecture given in person by a professor using PowerPoint slides. Copies of the slides were given to aid note-taking. In the podcast condition, participants received a podcast of the same lecture along with the PowerPoint handouts. Participants in both conditions were instructed to keep a running log of study time and activities used in preparing for an exam. One week from the initial session students returned to take an exam on lecture content. Results indicated that students in the podcast condition who took notes while listening to the podcast scored significantly higher than the lecture condition. The impact of mobile learning on classroom performance is discussed.     

Virtual reality for collaborative e-learning

In the past, the term e-learning referred to any method of learning that used electronic delivery methods. With the advent of the Internet however, e-learning has evolved and the term is now most commonly used to refer to online courses. A multitude of systems are now available to manage and deliver learning content online. While these have proved popular, they are often single-user learning environments which provide little in the way of interaction or stimulation for the student. As the concept of lifelong learning now becomes a reality and thus more and more people are partaking in online courses, researchers are constantly exploring innovative techniques to motivate online students and enhance the e-learning experience. This article presents our research in this area and the resulting development of CLEV-R, a Collaborative Learning Environment with Virtual Reality. This web-based system uses Virtual Reality (VR) and multimedia and provides communication tools to support collaboration among students. In this article, we describe the features of CLEV-R, its adaptation for mobile devices and present the findings from an initial evaluation.     

Acceptance of competency-based workplace e-learning systems: Effects of individual and peer learning support

Current endeavors to integrate competency-based learning approaches with e-learning systems designed for delivery of training to adult learners in the workplace are growing. However, academic efforts in examining learners’ perceptions of, and reactions toward, this technology-delivered pedagogical innovation are limited. Drawing together perspectives from the literature on training and instructional design and technology acceptance, this research proposed a conceptual model to examine the influences of perceived individual and social learning support on employees’ acceptance of competency-based e-learning systems. Structural equation modeling and multi-group structural equation modeling techniques were applied to sample data collected from work settings in Mainland China. The results show the positive effects of perceived individual learning support and perceived support for promoting a norm of cooperation on employees’ intention to use the competency-based e-learning system. It was also found that perceived support for enhancing social ties had a negative effect on employees’ behavioral intention. The gender, age, prior experience, and work experience differences in the main effects were also investigated. Besides, qualitative data collected via semi-structured in-depth interview provide complementary evidence to the findings.     

Cognitive,social and teaching presence in a virtual world and a text chat

Using a framework of cognitive, social, and teaching presence, the nature of learning experiences in a three-dimensional virtual world environment (Second Life) and a text-chat learning environment without visuals (TeachNet) were investigated. A mixed method of code frequencies, coherence graphs, interviews, and a survey was used. The results revealed that the TeachNet debates included more cognitive presence codes that indicate higher levels of cognitive processing than in SL debates. The teams were significantly different from each other in the collaboration style for developing arguments and in the ways to use utterances associated with cognitive, social, and teaching presences, and the groups’ collaboration style became more established with more experience with the tasks. The three critical factors–tool, tasks and group cohesion–that affect cognitive, teaching, and social presence are discussed.