Facebook to facilitate instructor roles in course-related online interaction: a pilot study

The popularity of Facebook as the most used platform among university youth made it an acceptable platform for professional purposes. The use of Facebook for educational purpose is becoming more accepted to facilitate and ease online interaction with the learning participants. The purpose of this study is to investigate students’ expectations towards the instructor role in learning interaction through Facebook and its correlation with students’ academic performance. Quantitative data was collected from the respondents through survey method of data collection. The findings of the study reveal that students have positive expectations of instructor role on Facebook interaction. Additionally, the findings reveal that there are a correlation between instructor role of facilitating discourse and direct instruction with students’ academic performance

Online social presence osp patterns correlation with students academic performance among master of education program students

More social presence in online learning environment was seen to be one of the important predictors of students' academic performance. However, patterns of students' Online Social Presence (OSP) when using social networking tools for learning has not been widely discussed in previous studies. Therefore, this study was aimed to investigate the patterns of students' OSP. Moreover, this study aimed to find which patterns of students' OPS that correlated to their Academic Performance (AP). The investigated patterns of OSP are Social Respect (SR), Social Sharing (SS), Open Mind (OM), Social Identity (SI) and Intimacy (I). The quantitative methods of data collection and data analysis were used in this study. The data were collected from 65 students in one of Malaysian Public Universities. OSP Questionnaire (OSPQ) was adopted to collect the required data. The data were analyzed using SPSS software to find mean, standard deviation for each pattern of students' OSP. Moreover, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient was used to analyze the correlation between each pattern of students' OSP and AP. The findings of this study showed that all patterns of OSP were highly perceived by the respondents of the study. Moreover, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient outcome showed high and significant correlation between SR, SS, OM and SI with students' AP while the correlation between Intimacy and AP was low

The design and development of online authentic learning environment for knowledge construction in learning inferential statistics

One of the major problems in learning statistics is due to the learning decontextualized from the real world experience. The students are unable to apply statistical knowledge learnt in real world upon completion of the course. The authentic learning is viewed as a favourable approach in statistics delivery to overcome the problem. However, implementing authentic learning in online platform can be extremely resource intensive and costly to develop. Therefore this paper looked into an innovative and cost effective approach to incorporate the nine critical characteristics of Authentic Learning Model by Herrington and Oliver (2000), underpinned by Vygotsky (1978) Social Development Theory and Lave and Wenger (1991) Situated Learning Theory to develop an online authentic learning environment (OnALE) that foster students' knowledge construction in learning inferential statistics among non-statistics major undergraduates. This environment is established in a social learning network, Edmodo by incorporating Web 2.0 technologies. Perception survey done indicates that OnALE assisted students learning

Depicting students social presence on social networking site in course-related interaction

Social networking sites (SNS) are widely used among students, where its integration in higher education is increasing across years. Therefore, this study aimed to analyze students’ use of social presence (SP) expressions in blended learning environment using Facebook group as a medium of online discussion. A total of 11 students and one instructor were involved in 7-week multimedia learning course in one of the Malaysian universities. The content of students’ online discussion on Facebook group was the source of the data in this study. The discussion content was transcribed, coded, and analyzed, and the frequencies of categories were calculated to determine students’ use of SP expressions. The findings of the study revealed that students focus on delivering more interactive response (IR) posts across all learning topics. Interestingly, although SNS are social in nature, this study revealed that students’ use of SP expressions on SNS was intended to improve course discussion interactivity rather than for pure socializing purpose. However, more theoretical topics triggered higher number of SP posts compared with technical focused topics. More importantly, the way students used SP expressions during course-related interaction through Facebook may contribute to improved performance in test

Analysing students’ cognitive engagement in e-learning discussion forums through content analysis

Discussion forums provide students with accessible platforms for group discussions in e-learning environments. They also help lecturers to track and check student discussions. To improve student learning, it is important for lecturers to identify students’ cognitive engagement in discussion forums. Therefore, this study aims to investigate students’ cognitive engagement in e-learning through content analysis of forum posts. A total of 267 forum posts created by students during one semester were collected for analysis. Inferential statistics were applied to explore the relationship between students’ cognitive engagement and their gender and the number of posts in forums. The results revealed that about half of the students gave their posts without any explanations, which reflected a low level of cognitive engagement. A large number of posts made little contribution to a high level of cognitive engagement. The results also showed no relationship between gender and the level of cognitive engagement. The limitations and implications of this study are also discussed

Meta-analysis of content analysis models for analysing online problem solving discussion

Content analysis method has been widely used to assess students' response in online discussion. Selecting appropriate content analysis model is important to ensure the validity of research finding. As one of the ultimate goals in learning is to develop students' cognitive skills, this paper highlights the existing content analysis models adopted in previous studies to assess the cognitive aspect of students' learning in online discussion forum. Features of content analysis model and several recommendations for future studies are also discussed in this study

A framework of metacognitive scaffolding in learning authoring system through Facebook

Scaffolding refers to a guidance that helps students during their learning sessions whereby it makes learning easier for them. This study aims to develop a framework of metacognitive scaffolding (MS) to guide students in learning Authoring System through Facebook. Thirty-seven master degree students who were enrolled in Authoring System course from three different cohorts of study were selected as respondents. The study identified the dominant mechanism of MS prompted by the instructor, along with the dominant types of online interaction triggered by the students in a Facebook discussion. The data were analyzed by using content analysis technique. Data were collected from the observation through Facebook discussions. Results indicate that the dominant mechanisms of MS prompted by the instructors include guiding the students to focus on their learning processes, providing the students with an instant feedback, and also asking or presenting the rationale of the tasks and activities involved. The dominant types of online interactions include acknowledgment of opinion, evaluating own or other's understanding, and clarifying and elaborating own understanding. Based on these findings, the proposed framework recommends a series of rules that serves as a guideline for the instructor to produce meaningful learning among the students through MS

Metacognitive scaffolding to support students in learning authoring system subject

Authoring System is one of the computer-based subjects that expose students with creative activities using an authoring tool such as Adobe Flash software to produce multimedia applications. The demonstrations and hands-on activities among students while learning this subject are fundamental. Therefore, the guidance from the instructors through the use of metacognitive scaffolding may ease their difficulties, as this type of guidance supports students in understanding the best possible strategy to accomplish difficult tasks and thus, develop their thinking. In this study, students were scaffolded by the instructor through the use of mechanisms of metacognitive scaffolding. This guidance was delivered through the discussion on the Facebook group page, in which each prompted mechanism of metacognitive scaffolding from the instructor was coded accordingly. In addition, to demonstrate the effectiveness, students were given a pre and post test assessment. This study was carried out for seven weeks. The sample of the study was composed of twenty master students from the Educational Technology program. The quantitative analysis reveals that students' performance in learning Authoring System subject increase after receiving metacognitive scaffolding from their instructor

Facebook as a platform for academic-related discussion and its impact on students success

With the advent of social networking sites and the development of interactive tools that allow users to share information and opinions, the way people socialize in terms of both teaching and learning is also changing. Nowadays, educators have considered using this technology as an e-learning platform: A stage where interaction between instructors and learners takes place. This promotes participation among students for knowledge construction. To date, social networking sites such as Facebook have attracted billions of users worldwide. However, there is a distinct lack of studies that review the potential of Facebook as a platform for academic-related discussion or its impact on students' academic success. Therefore, this study reviews several works that use Facebook as a platform for academic discussions. It also aims to investigate students' achievement based on their interactions on Facebook through discussion between instructors and peers. Thirty-seven students who were enrolled on an Educational Technology program were involved in the present study. Findings reveal that Facebook has the potential to become a tool for academic-related discussion. Data analysis also demonstrates that students' academic achievement increases as a result of their participation and discussion with instructors and peers through Facebook