Assessing Peer Support and Usability of Blogging Technology Yao Jen Chang Department of Electronic Engineering Chung-Yuan Christian University, Taiwan Chu-Hui Chen Institute of Education Chung Yuan Christian University Chung-Li, Taiwan 320

Outline Motivations and backgrounds Research Methods Experiment Settings Experimental Results and Observations Concluding Remarks Q&A 2015/11/222

Motivations Existing base of knowledge on educational blogging is insufficient. Enthusiastic claims for blogging in educational settings need to be focused on a comprehensive research base. Research base should be broadly supported by vigorous empirical studies conducted in the framework of educational theory. To provide an evidence base for educators who are considering deploying blogs as learning tools

Research Questions To what extent can blogs serve as a tool to encourage participation and support peer learning in higher education? Are blogs suited for all students in educational settings, considering their perceivable differences in levels of academic performance and learning preferences?

Approaches A comprehensive set of research methods, such as survey, dataset analysis, ethnographical observations, and evidence investigation. Triangulation of methods was expected to generate more reliable results than use of one single method in a study.

Experiment Settings Courses: two undergraduate laboratory classes, namely Java Programming Language and Programming for Web-based Applications Time: Spring semester of 2005, Fall semester of 2005 Members: 30~40 students Activities: students writing comments to each other, up to 3 comments per student Style: hybrid learning. Use of blogs to augment the scope of learning, not to replace classroom learning

Triangulation Strategy in Evaluations Goal investigation of peer support and social learning data sources questionnaires for user survey, blog dataset recorded by the system, classroom observations, descriptive online feedback from students, and informal face-to-face conversations with students. Methods Content Analysis Survey Ethnographic observations The triangulation strategy for the use of multiple methods and data sources has produced a reliable evidence base for this study.

Content Analysis three attributes of messages mediated through social software ( as suggested in the work of Hall and Davison) reflection, propositional stances, and affective tones. All the comments were evaluated on the three dimensions and coded accordingly. For example, a disagreeing reply with reflective thoughts and positive tones will be coded as RDP, which stands for “Reflective, Disagree, and Positive” in terms of reflection, stances, and tones. Content Analysis was performed manually.

The first semester had a dominant number of non- reflective comments (61%) while the second semester had the dominance transferred to reflective comments (79%). The patterns of distributions in propositional stances and affective tone of both semesters showed significant similarity. Peer support in terms of propositional stances or affection was significant. Observations through Content Analysis (1/3)

Regardless of the level of reflection, we saw comments in blogs were mostly affectively positive, ranging 54%~81% in our study, showed few negative attitudes, ranging from 2%~9%. Observations through Content Analysis (2/3)

There is significantly more observed reflection (79%) in the second semester than in the first (34%). The difference of level of peer support in terms of propositional stances and affective tones remains statistically insignificant over time. Stances and tones have a strong interaction. Observations through Content Analysis (3/3)

Usability Study Goal: to examine the relationship between students’ academic achievements and perceived usability with blogs Method: user survey on blog preference cross checked with academic performance Hypothesis: Students of different levels of academic achievements show differences in learning preferences. Tool: A chi-square test for independence evaluates statistically significant differences.

Statistical Results Based on the data analysis, it is found that the hypothesis is supported with χ2 = 6.156, df=2, p<0.05. This yields a statistically significant difference in student academic achievement versus learning preferences. We see that higher-achieving students prefer to blogs

Discussions Lower-achieving students had an especially difficult time composing a comprehensive work on their blogs. their lower abilities to organize the learning tasks The higher achieving students showed their talents in making blogs appealing able to freely have themselves expressed in the styles

Concluding remarks The social value of peer support is vastly supported in the empirical content analysis. Investigation of the usability of blogs for students with different achievement levels shows differences in blog preferences. Students with higher academic performance prefer to blogs for assignments, while students with lower academic performance prefer to traditional reports.