Friday, February 6, 1998

Student motivation in computer conferencing learning environments
Eva Bures

Student motivation in computer-conferencing learning environments: Student Motivation to Learn via Computer Conferencing (CC)

The primary objective of this preliminary study was to explore the relationship between student motivation and student acceptance of CC systems. More specifically, it was hypothesized that both students' expectations regarding CC and their goal orientations (that is, reasons for engaging in academic learning) would be related to their satisfaction with CC and the frequency of their online activity. In turn, students' CC expectations might be related to students' general expectations about the use of technology in learning and anxiety toward computers.

Participants were volunteers from 5 graduate-level face-to-face courses and from 1 undergraduate distance education course at a Quebec university during the 1996/1997 academic year, n=79.

This correlational study assessed students at the beginning of the course using the ATCUS to measure attitudes and anxiety toward computers (Popovich, Hyde, Zadkrajsek, & Blumer, 1987), the Goals Inventory measure (Roedel, Schraw, & Plake, 1994) to measure goal orientation, and items constructed by the researchers to measure students' CC expectations. The post-course questionnaire contained 13 items to measure student satisfaction with CC.

All results are reported at p< 0.05. Results suggest that: 1) students' expectations were related to their satisfaction with CC and to their total online messages; 2) students' success expectations were related to the number of graded messages they sent; and 3) students' outcome expecations were related to their satisfaction with CC and with the number of ungraded messages they sent. A significant negative relationship was found between high performance orientation and the number of ungraded messages students sent.

Computer attitudes were significantly correlated to students' expectations, and success expectations in particular. Computer anxiety and students' success expectations were also found to be correlated. Prior experience with computers did not correlate significantly with students' success expectations.

This preliminary study provides us with the basis for new research currently in progress.

References

Popovich, P., Hyde, K., Zadkrajsek, T. & Blumer, C. (1987).The Development of the attitudes toward computer usage scale. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 47, 261-269.

Roedel, T. B., Schraw, G., & Plake, B.S. (1994). Validation of a measure of learning and performance goal orientations. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 54, 1013-1021.

Using video as a research tool
Deborah Murray

Using Video as a Research Tool

This project set out to explore if raw data from informant-made videos would help in drawing conclusions about political strategies and action in the student protest movement in Montreal from actual student experience.It is based on documentary and ethnographic filmmaking practices developed in, for example, the National Film Board's Challenge for Change series and more recent informant-made videos.It utilizes the stories from the informant- made videos in the same way that storytelling is used in popular education and critical pedagogical realms, i.e. to explore questions of social change.

The project was conducted after a period of student demonstrations, strikes and occupations in the Fall semester of 1996.Two students were asked to tell a story, with the aid of a video camera, about their involvement in the actions of that Fall.They were asked to talk about how they felt about the student mobilizations and their personal involvement in them, and to videotape images that would aid them in the telling of their stories. The visual and narrative events in their videos were subsequently analyzed to help in developing critical understandings of the student movement and student activists within them.