Search

This study investigated undergraduate students' intention to use wiki technology. An extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been used by taking into account not only students' wiki perceived utility and usability, but also Big Five personality characteristics and two other variables, social norms, and facilitating conditions, as proposed in the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT). Students' beliefs before (pre-wiki scenario) and after (post-wiki scenario) the actual use of the wiki system were investigated, with 85 and 86 participants respectively. The hypotheses were tested using partial least squares analysis. For the pre-wiki scenario, 8/15 hypotheses were confirmed and 11/15 for the post-wiki scenario. The relationship between perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness was found to be of the highest magnitude. The most notable difference across the two scenarios was that the relation between perceived ease of use and attitudes towards use was significant only in the first scenario. The results demonstrate that the proposed TAM-extended model could predict students' wiki acceptance.

Perceived usability affects greatly student's learning effectiveness and overall learning experience, and thus is an important requirement of educational software. The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a well-researched and widely used questionnaire for perceived usability evaluation. However, surprisingly few studies have used SUS to evaluate the perceived usability of learning management systems (LMSs). This paper presents an empirical evaluation of the SUS questionnaire in the context of LMSs' perceived usability evaluation. Eleven studies involving 769 students were conducted, in which participants evaluated the usability of two LMSs (eClass and Moodle) used within courses of their curriculum. It was found that the perceived usability of the evaluated LMSs is at a satisfactory level (mean SUS score 76.27). Analysis of the results also demonstrated the validity and reliability of SUS for LMSs' evaluation, and that it remains robust even for small sample sizes. Moreover, the following SUS attributes were investigated in the context of LMSs evaluation: gender, age, prior experience with the LMS, Internet self-efficacy, attitude towards the Internet and usage frequency of the LMS.

The present article examines the relationship between student personality, use of social media and their academic performance and engagement. Specifically, this article examines the relationship of students' Facebook (FB) use and personality characteristics using the Big Five Personality Test. This is focused on (a) student engagement; (b) time spent preparing for class; (c) time spent in co-curricular activities; and (d) academic performance. 204 higher education students participated in the study. Results illustrate that FB time was significantly positively correlated to student engagement and time spent preparing for class. Sharing links activity was positively correlated with student engagement and playing FB games with time spent preparing for class. However, sending private messages and status updates were significantly negatively correlated with student engagement and time spent preparing for class. Also, viewing videos was negatively correlated with time spent in co-curricular activities. Chatting on FB and viewing photos found to be the most popular activities. Moreover, students' extraversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience were positively correlated to student engagement. In addition, extraversion had a positive relationship with time spent in co-curricular activities, although agreeableness had a negative relationship. Implications of the study for the instructors and the students are also discussed.

The influence of students' non-cognitive characteristics on their learning performance constitutes a significant but rather unexplored topic. The goal of the research presented in this article, is to examine the relation between the students' personality characteristics (as measured using the Big Five Personality Test) and their learning outcome in the context of four framed wiki-based learning activities. 368 university students participated in the studies. Meta-analysis of results indicates that learning gain was significant negatively correlated with one of the five basic personality dimensions, namely Extraversion. Also, agreeableness was significant positively correlated with learning gain. Moreover, conscientiousness and emotionally stability were significant positively correlated with logged wiki edits that students made in this activity. It is argued, and discussed, that results from such studies can lead to useful conclusions regarding the design of appropriate activities and the creation of more effective collaborative teams in the context of wiki-based web activities.

A considerable interest in using Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis in education has been observed recently. Despite the advantages of the wiki technology, a number of questions concerning design of appropriate activities and their learning effectiveness remain open. In this paper, we present the results of three activities involving first-year university students using wikis to learn basic concepts related to information technology. Three activities of different classes were designed and delivered to the students using the framework proposed by West and West (2009). In all studies, a one-group pretest-posttest design was adopted. Results illustrated significant improvement in learning outcomes, particularly for students with low initial performance. The average students' questionnaire score jumped from 39.0/100 to 57.3/100. No significant effect of both students' role in the activity and their school stream on learning gain was observed. Finally, regardless of the activity's class and learning goal, a persistent pattern of high learning gain was observed.

Given that educational technology has increased tremendously, usability testing is a necessity to maximize the efficiency of technological tools in education. The findings of a systematic review including 42 research papers that evaluated the educational technologies' perceived usability with the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) and the Computer System Usability Questionnaire (CSUQ) are presented in this article. The results were categorized according to the following factors: (a) score derived from evaluating usability with PSSUQ/CSUQ, (b) type of educational technology employed, (c) subject studied, (d) educational stage, (e) participant type, (f) age, and (g) participant count in each survey. The usability levels were found to be satisfactory (M = 72.75, SD = 15.12) from the statistical analysis of all surveys (N = 58). The mobile applications category showed a very good mean PSSUQ/CSUQ score (M = 81.53, SD = 12.61) followed by the multimedia category with 73.89 (SD = 19.69) and internet platforms (M = 73.23, SD = 7.74). The educational stage (p = 0.01) and the participant type (p = 0.005) seem to relate to the obtained PSSUQ/CSUQ scores. However, the participants' age, the subject being studied, or the participant count in each study did not exhibit any significant correlation with the PSSUQ/CSUQ scores. Over the course of time, a marginal non-statistically significant improvement was noted in terms of perceived usability (p = 0.136). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usefulness and ease of use proved to be key determinants of the acceptance and usage of e-learning. On the contrary, little is known about students' perceptions in a blended learning setting. In this paper, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was utilised, in order to investigate Greek university students' attitudes toward blended learning. The goal of the study was twofold. First, to investigate whether the students' perceptions in a blended learning setting were comparable with other studies reporting perceptions in the context of distant learning. Second, to investigate variation in students' perceptions before and after actual system use. A sample of 130 students before actual system use and 102 students after the end of the semester was used. As derived from the model analysis using partial least squares, the e-learning system was well accepted and the majority of our hypotheses were confirmed. The most notable difference between pre- and post- use scenario was that perceived usefulness did not prove to have a significant effect on behavioral intention before system use, whereas, in the end, it appeared to be significant. The results are compared with similar studies focused on e-learning acceptance. The implications, both for the designer of a blended learning course as well as for the educational community, are also discussed. (Contains 8 tables and 2 figures.)

During the last years, development of open learning environments that support effectively their users has been a challenge for the research community of educational technologies. The open interactive nature of these environments results in users experiencing difficulties in coping with the plethora of available functions, especially during their initial efforts to use the system. In addition,--from the tutors' perspective--the problem solving strategies of the students are often particularly difficult to identify. In this paper, we argue that such problems could be tackled using machine learning techniques such as Bayesian Networks. We show how we can take advantage of log files obtained during field studies to build an adaptive help system providing the most useful support to the student, according to the state of interaction. On the other hand, we attempt to support the tutor, by automating the process of diagnosing students' problem solving strategies using Bayesian Networks. The presented approaches are discussed through examples of two prototypes that have been developed and corresponding evaluation studies. These studies have shown that the proposed approach can effectively support the tasks of students and tutors in such open learning environments. (Contains 7 figures and 2 tables.)

NIKOLAOS K. TSELIOS (1) NIKOLAOS M. AVOURIS (1) ANGELIQUE DIMITRACOPOULOU (2) SOPHIA DASKALAKI (1) Experimental results of usability evaluation of a distance learning system are presented in this article. An […]