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Eric Calvert

How Online Companies Get You to Share More and Spend More | Magazine - 0 views

www.wired.com/...5

motivation feedback amazon Wired Facebook

shared by Eric Calvert on 03 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Much of Facebook’s genius revolves around the Wall: a public space that we curate but that other people can add to. Within the universe of the site, where everyone is a “friend,” you feel a special compulsion to respond to Wall posts—to comment on others’ posts to yours and to reciprocate by writing on theirs. We want our Walls to reflect ourselves. It’s analogous to the way we curate our belongings, which itself is a window into our personalities. (The psychologist Sam Gosling has shown you can learn more about people from their possessions than from spending time with them. Walls are basically the same—a storefront window to the self.) Users want to display a self that is somewhere between their real self and how they would like to be perceived, which creates a substantial motivation for constant monitoring and upkeep of the Wall.
Eric Calvert

Beyond Information: Developing the Relationship betweehn the Individual and the Group i... - 0 views

www.evernote.com/...elationship-rev2-submitted.pdf

online communities engagement social networks

shared by Eric Calvert on 27 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Eric Calvert on 27 Apr 11
     
    Potentially good stuff for next week. (Is this article too technical to be a reading for the class?) Intresting tidbits: getting negative feedback in an online community is better than getting no feedback in terms of maintaining involvement. People who introduce themselves in postings are more likely to get responses. "Endorsements" are reinforcing. (THus the like button?) People participate longer if they received replies containing first-person plural pronouns (e.g. "we" vs. "you.") Communities that police people mistreating newcomers are more successful. Most successful communities have facilitators (or people who take on a facilitative role.) 
Eric Calvert

Modeling Social Media in Groups, Communities, and Networks - 0 views

www.tesl-ej.org/...ej51int

stevens groups learning communities social media

shared by Eric Calvert on 21 Apr 11 - Cached
  • This article views social networking as practiced distinctly in groups, communities, and networks. Drawing from experience coordinating a teachers’ community of practice for the past decade, the evolution of what was initially a group into a community of practice is illustrated, as well as how social media enables one CoP to interact with others to become part of a distributed learning network. Participants in the networked communities continually leverage each other’s professional development, and what is modeled and practiced in transactions there is applied later in their teaching practices. Recidivism is a problem in technology training for education. Teachers can be shown how to use social media, but unless they use it themselves they are unlikely to change their practices. There is evidence that teachers trained in programs where their instructors used social media (modeled it) are more comfortable with technology than if their instructors did not themselves use these tools. This article suggests how teachers can interact with numerous communities of practice and distributed learning networks where other participants are modeling to and learning from one another optimal ways of using social media in teaching. This strongly suggests that teachers must be trained not only in the use of social media, but through its use.
Eric Calvert

Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities: - 0 views

jcmc.indiana.edu/...ling.html

social psychology online communities motivation Kraut

shared by Eric Calvert on 01 Mar 11 - Cached
  • Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities
  • Under-contribution is a problem for many online communities. Social psychology theories of social loafing and goal-setting can lead to mid-level design goals to address this problem. We tested design principles derived from these theories in four field experiments involving members of an online movie recommender community. In each of the experiments participated were given different explanations for the value of their contributions. As predicted by theory, individuals contributed when they were reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and challenging goals. However, other predictions were disconfirmed.
  • Despite the vibrancy of online communities, large numbers of them fail. In many online groups, participation drops to zero. Butler (1999) found that 50% of social, hobby, and work mailing lists had no traffic over a period of four months. On the popular peer-to-peer music sharing service, Gnutella, 10% of users provide 87% of all the music (Adar & Huberman, 2000). In open-source development communities, 4% of members account for 50% of answers on a user-to-user help site (Lakhani & Hippel, 2003), and 4% of developers contribute 88% of new code and 66% of code fixes (Mockus, Fielding, & Andersen, 2002).
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  • We believe that it is an important and difficult challenge to design technical features of online communities and seed their social practices in a way that generates ongoing contributions from a larger fraction of the participants.
  • Economists and political scientists have observed that across a wide range of settings, people contribute less than the optimal amount of public goods and consume more than their fair share of common pool resources, although the antisocial behavior is considerably less than theories based on pure short-term self-interest would predict (see Ledyard, 1995 for a review).
  • Social psychologists have identified an analogous phenomenon called social loafing. People exert less effort on a collective task than they do on a comparable individual task (see Karau & Williams, 1993 for a review).
  • Social loafing, or free riding, is the robust phenomenon that occurs when people work less hard to achieve some goal when they think they are working jointly with others than when they think they are working by themselves. Karau and Williams' (1993) collective-effort model is a type of utility theory that claims that people work hard when they think their effort will help them achieve outcomes they value. Working in a group can influence how hard people work because it can change their perception of the importance of their contribution to achieving a specified level of performance, their likelihood of reaching the goal, and the value they place on the outcomes they gain by their efforts
  • The collective effort model identifies conditions under which people will socially loaf less. These include, among others: (a) believing that their effort is important to the group's performance, (b) believing that their contributions to the group are identifiable, and (c) liking the group they are working with.
  • The collective effort model posits that people will socially loaf less and contribute to a group more, the more they see their contribution as important to the group (Karau & Williams, 1993). If they believe that their contributions are redundant with those that others in the group can provide, then there is little reason to contribute, because their contributions have little likelihood of influencing the group. Conversely, if they think they are unique, they should be more motivated to contribute,
  • The collective effort model posits that people will socially loaf less and contribute more to a group the more they like it (Karau & Williams, 1993). By doing so, they increase their own utility by benefiting the group. In contrast, they do not receive the same benefit if they contribute to groups they dislike.
  • People tend to like others who are similar to themselves (Byrne, 1997; Byrne & Griffith, 1973) and to dislike groups composed of dissimilar members (Williams & O'Reilly, 1998). In Experiment 1, we manipulated subjects' liking for their discussion group by populating the group with others who had either similar or dissimilar tastes in movies.
  • Consistent with Hypothesis 1, subjects posted more messages in the uniqueness condition, when they were given personalized information about how their knowledge of movies differed from others (See Table 1: z=2.88, p<.004). However, Hypothesis 2 was disconfirmed. Subjects posted fewer messages when conversing in groups constructed so that members had similar tastes in movies than in groups with heterogeneous members (z=-2.45, p<.05).
  • Both posting and rating data show that people contributed more when they were made to see themselves as having unique information to contribute. In retrospect, the finding that subjects posted more to the conversation forum when they were least similar to those they were talking to may also reflect the influence of uniqueness.
  • When individuals rate movies, they benefit the community as a whole by increasing the accuracy of recommendations that others receive. However, this benefit to the community may not be visible to members, because they do not have the data to see the correlation between their ratings and the accuracy of recommendations for others. Therefore, making explicit the benefit that the community receives from their ratings should increase their ratings. Hypothesis 3b: MovieLens users will rate more movies when the benefit they provide to the community from doing so is made salient.
  • The benefit manipulation contained four conditions: no benefit, only benefit to self, only benefit to others, and benefit to both self and others. Participants who received the self-benefit manipulation received a message that said, "Rating more movies helps you! The more ratings you provide, the easier it is for MovieLens to identify people with similar taste to yours, and thus make accurate recommendations for you." Participants who received the other-benefit manipulation received a message that said, "Rating more movies helps the MovieLens community! The more ratings you provide, the more information we have about each movie and the easier it is to make accurate recommendations for other people." Participants in the both-self-and-other-benefit condition received a combination of these messages, but those in the no-benefit condition received neither.
  • Of the 830 participants who received email, 397 (47.8%) members logged in and rated at least one movie. Descriptive analysis including all 830 participants showed that they rated an average of 19.26 movies during the week following the invitation, far higher than the 5.4 movies per week they had rated in the previous six months.
  • articipants who logged in during the experiment rated on average 39.7 movies, far higher than the 9.1 ratings made by individuals from a matched control group who logged in during the week of the experiment.
  • The results of this experiment confirm what telemarketers know: Email messages can motivate people in an online community simply by reminding them of an opportunity to contribute. More interestingly, the content of the message made a difference, partially in line with the collective effort model. Making members of the community feel unique encouraged them to contribute more in general, and especially to contribute in the domain where they were unique.
  • Previous research has shown that when people are intrinsically motivated to perform some behavior, the promise of extrinsic rewards, such as money or grades, reduces their intrinsic interest in it (Thompson, Meriac, & Cope, 2002). As a result, they are less likely to perform the behavior in the absence of the reward, compared to those who were never offered a reward.
  • Goal setting theory, a robust theory of motivation in social psychology, has shown that assigning people challenging, specific goals causes them to achieve more (Locke & Latham, 1990, 2002).
  • Hundreds of studies with over 40,000 subjects have shown that specific, challenging goals stimulate higher achievement than easy or "do your best" goals (Locke & Latham, 1990). High-challenge assigned goals energize performance in three ways (Bandura, 1993). First, they lead people to set higher personal goals, in turn increasing their effort. Second, assigned goals enhance self-efficacy, or belief in one's own ability to complete a task (Bandura, 1993). Third, achieving an assigned goal leads to task satisfaction, which enhances both self-efficacy and commitment to future goals, resulting in an upward performance spiral.
  • The theory claims that difficult, specific, context-appropriate, and immediate goals, rather than long-term goals, motivate people most, and that they do so especially in tasks that are simple and non-interdependent and give them feedback on their performance against the goal.
  • Although most research on assigned goals has assigned them only to individuals, assigning goals to groups shows the same motivating effects (see Weldon & Weingart, 1993 for an overview). The collective effort model (Karau & Williams, 1993) predicts that individual goals and feedback will be more motivating than group goals, because in a group setting people can believe that their contribution is partially redundant and that if they shirk, others can take up the slack. Although some studies have found that group goals are more motivating than individual goals, these findings are reversed as group size increases beyond 3-5 members (Streit, 1996).
  • Goal Specificity Non-specific goal condition subjects were told to "do your best" to rate movies. Their message said, "[You/The Explorers] have a goal of doing [your/their] best to rate additional movies over the next seven days." In the specific-goal condition, subjects were assigned a specific number of movies to rate. We asked individual-goal-condition subjects to either rate 8, 16, 32 or 64 movies in a week, and subjects in the 10-member "Explorers" group to rate either 80, 160, 320 or 640 movies in a week. We set eight ratings per week as a baseline goal based on subjects' mean weekly contribution in the past.
  • Subjects who received specific goals were marginally more likely to log in than those who received do-your-best goals (z=1.73, p=.08).
  • Hypothesis 6, which predicted that members given specific numeric goals would rate more than those given do-your-best goals, was supported. Subjects rated 27% more movies when given one of the specific goals than the non-specific do-your-best goals (z=.2.87, p<.01). Moreover, the marginally significant group goal specific goal interaction (z=1.67, p<.10) indicates specific goals had a larger effect in the individual-goal condition than in the group condition.
  • Hypothesis 7, which predicted members given individual goals would rate more movies than those with group goals, was disconfirmed. Subjects in the individual-goal condition rated 42% of the movies they rated in group-goal condition (z=-2.43, p<.02).
  • Although, based on the collective effort model, we had expected that individual goals would be more effective than group goals in stimulating contribution, we found the reverse. Two alternatives may explain this reversal. First, naming the group "Explorers" may have motivated greater effort by making members identify with this in-group, to the exclusion of unnamed out-groups (Kane, Argote, & Levine, 2005; Tajfel & Turner, 1986). Second, the presence of both individual and group level feedback in the group condition may have resulted in social facilitation (Zajonc, 1965) rather than social loafing.
  • One key insight from the collective effort model is that people will be more likely to contribute to a group task if they think their contribution will not duplicate what others can provide and is thus needed for accomplishing the group's goal. Many online communities provide feedback on the number or assessed quality of their contributions, like the "top reviewer" designations given to some contributors on the www.epinions.com website. However, we know of no online community that provides feedback to contributors about the uniqueness of their contributions.
Eric Calvert

open thinking » youth - 1 views

educationaltechnology.ca/...youth

david after dentist youtube memes rocketboom

shared by Eric Calvert on 21 Apr 11 - Cached
  • Eric Calvert on 21 Apr 11
     
    Anthropological review of YouTube phenomenon "David After Dentist"
Eric Calvert

Social Media: The Media We Love to Hate | Psychology Today - 0 views

www.psychologytoday.com/...l-media-the-media-we-love-hate

social media psychology today

shared by Eric Calvert on 21 Apr 11 - Cached
  • What is the media we love to hate? Right now, it's social media.
  • Social Media is an easy target
  • When people process information that challenges their view of the world, many lose the ability to think critically. They seek cognitive consonance and comfort.
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  • “See, I KNEW all this media stuff kids do is bad for them.” Just like dime novels, comic books, short skirts, Elvis Presley and Rock and Roll. The rap on Socrates was that he was corrupting youth, too. It’s a wonder any of us survived!
  • New media is not a crisis. It is a fact of life. Get used to it.
  • I urge all of you parents and caring adults out there to learn about new technologies so that you can make judgments that are contextually relevant and so that you can provide guidelines that make sense to kids in THEIR world, not yours.  That is, in fact, where they have to live.  In their world, if you don't know how to use technology you are at a severe disadvantage--and not just socially.  The 21st century skills that our kids will need include technological and media literacy and I mean that in the broadest sense.  Media literacy today is not just the ability to think critically about content.  It is the ability to think critically about use and production in a networked society.
  • But the real issue is that kids use technology differently than their parents do.
  • They also think about the whole process of connection and communication differently. They aren’t thinking of Facebook or texting as a replacement for some other means of communication. They aren't angsting over the qualitative differences between voice, face to face, or text. It is just how they communicate.
  • They aren’t in this for the tools. They’re in it for the social connection.
Eric Calvert

Using Social Psychology to Motivate Contributions to Online Communities (2004) - 0 views

www.cs.cmu.edu/...MotivateContribution-final.pdf

online communities engagement social networks CommunityLab

shared by Eric Calvert on 19 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Eric Calvert on 19 Apr 11
     
    ABSTRACT : Under-contribution is a problem for many online communities. Social psychology theories of social loafing and goal-setting can provide mid-level design principles to address this problem. We tested the design principles in two field experiments. In one, members of an online movie recommender community were reminded of the uniqueness of their contributions and the benefits that follow from them. In the second, they were given a range of individual or group goals for contribution. As predicted by theory, individuals contributed when they were reminded of their uniqueness and when they were given specific and challenging goals, but other predictions were not borne out. The paper ends with suggestions and challenges for mining social science theories as well as implications for design.
Eric Calvert

Behavior Chain for Online Participation: How Successful Web Services Structure Persuasion - 0 views

bjfogg.com/behavior.pdf

bjfogg persuasive technology social media online communities persuasion

shared by Eric Calvert on 19 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Eric Calvert on 19 Apr 11
     
    Paper by B.J. Fogg and Dean Eckles (2007). Abstract:  The success of many online services today depends on the company's ability to persuade users to take specific actions, such as registering or inviting friends. We examined over 50 popular Web services of this kind to understand the influence processes and strategies used. We found that successful online services share a pattern of target behaviors that can be viewed as part of an overall framework. We call this framework the "Behavior Chain for Online Participation." This paper briefly presents the general idea of a behavior chain and applies it to understanding persuasion patterns found online. We then illustrate the Behavior Chain for Online Participation by applying it to the Web service LinkedIn and other popular services. Future research may identify behavior chains in other domains and develop new research methods for validating behavior chains
Eric Calvert

ASCD Infobrief:Student Engagement:Motivating Students to Learn - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...ivating-Students-to-Learn.aspx

ascd motivation engagement

shared by Eric Calvert on 01 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Although research attests that students are most likely to be engaged in learning when they are active and given some choice and control over the learning process—and when the curriculum is individualized, authentic, and related to students' interests—surveys of classroom practices reveal that instruction emphasizing student passivity, rote learning, and routine is the rule rather than the exception (Goodlad, 1984; Yair, 2000).
  • What is student engagement? According to Fred Newmann, author of Student Engagement and Achievement in American Secondary Schools (1992), engaged students make a “psychological investment in learning. They try hard to learn what school offers. They take pride not simply in earning the formal indicators of success (grades), but in understanding the material and incorporating or internalizing it in their lives” (pp. 2–3). According to this definition, an engaged student is one who is intrinsically motivated to learn—that is, motivated from a desire for competence and understanding, or simply from a love of learning, rather than a desire for a good grade, a teacher's approval, or acceptance into a good college.
  • For example, humans are driven by a need to achieve competence (Newmann, Wehlage, & Lamborn, 1992), and their beliefs or expectations about their ability to perform certain tasks successfully influence future learning. When learners perceive that they have been successful at an endeavor, they are more likely to be motivated to learn in the future and to persist when faced with a difficult task; conversely, when learners have a history of failure, it becomes difficult to sustain the motivation to keep trying (Anderman & Midgley, 1998).
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  • Humans also need to feel securely connected to others and “worthy and capable of love and respect” (Stipek, 1996, p. 101). They are motivated to achieve when they feel that they are able to make a positive contribution to the group (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999).
  • Similarly, humans are driven to exercise control over their own activities, and children are more likely to be motivated to learn when they believe that their actions are internally initiated and when they have opportunities to regulate their own actions or make choices (Alderman, 1999; McCombs, n.d.; Sheldon & Biddle, 1998). Learners who do not believe that they have control or choice are less likely to expend the effort necessary to learn.
  • Researchers agree that schools that maximize student engagement should have the following characteristics:
  • Each student should have a curriculum at an appropriate level of difficulty, and teachers must have high but achievable expectations for all students (Alderman, 1999; Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Learning First Alliance, 2001). Instructional tasks should be of “intermediate difficulty”; they should be “tasks that students can complete but only with some effort, so as to engender feelings of increasing competence and pride” (Stipek, 1996, p. 89). Students should also be provided with clear, frequent, and constructive feedback so that they are able to see growth in their capacities and skills (McCombs, n.d.; Stipek, 1996; Wiggins & McTighe, 1998).
  • Schools should encourage students to take responsibility for “regulating their own learning and for being self-determined and autonomous learners,” for when choices are given to students, “the evidence is clear that student motivation, learning, and performance are enhanced” (McCombs, n.d., pp. 7–8). Researchers emphasize that the choices students receive must be authentic—and not token measures intended to pacify students.
  • Schools should organize themselves as communities that foster caring relationships between all members of the school community and treat all members fairly. Students are motivated to learn when they believe that their teachers care about their education and about them personally; therefore, they must have opportunities to share their ideas and perspectives, and schools must demonstrate to them that their perspectives are valued (McCombs, n.d., pp. 8–9). They should create a sense of community and common purpose; at the same time, they should recognize the diversity and individuality of each member of the community.
  • Teachers should make connections between students' prior knowledge and experiences and illustrate the connection between the curriculum and the real world (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999). Rather than emphasizing that students learn material because it will be on the test, teachers should underscore the relevance of classroom instruction to students' personal lives and future aspirations (Ormond, 1995; Sheldon & Biddle, 1998).
  • According to McCombs (n.d.), many students do not See the current educational content and practices as intrinsically interesting and engaging or relevant to their desired goals and personal interests. They also do not see the context as one that supports basic personal and social needs, such as to be self-determining, competent, and connected to others. (p. 4)
  • Ark and Wagner (2000) write, “Our collective and idealized memory” of schools “may be the greatest impediment that we face” (p. 3).
  • Sheldon and Biddle (1998) observe an unfortunate paradox arising from the accountability movement: Although maximal student growth may be the goal, if student attention is focused on tests that measure that growth, or on sanctions that reward or punish it, that growth will not be maximized. In contrast, if students are challenged, if their interests in the subject matter are encouraged, if they are given autonomy support, then their intrinsic interests, their motivation for learning, and their test scores will all grow more effectively.
Eric Calvert

Family Engagement | National Dropout Prevention Center/Network - 0 views

www.dropoutprevention.org/...family-engagement

engagement family dropouts

shared by Eric Calvert on 01 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Henderson and Mapp (2002) suggest the following action steps to establish effective family engagement programs:
  • Recognize that all parents, regardless of income, education level, or cultural background are involved in their children's education and want their children to do well in school;
  • Link family and community engagement efforts to student learning;
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  • Create initiatives that will support families to guide their children's learning, from preschool through high school;
  • Focus efforts to engage families on developing trusting and respectful relationships; and
  • Embrace a philosophy of partnership and be willing to share power with families. Make sure that parents and school staff understand that the responsibility for children's educational development is a collaborative enterprise (Mapp, 2004).
  • When parents are involved, students achieve more, regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnic/racial background, or the parents' education level;
  • The more extensive the parent involvement, the higher the student achievement;
  • When parents are involved in their students' education, those students have higher grades and test scores, better attendance, and complete homework more consistently;
  • When parents are involved, students exhibit more positive attitudes and behavior;
  • Educators hold higher expectations of students whose parents collaborate with the teacher. They also hold higher opinions of those parents;
  • In programs that are designed to involve parents in full partnerships, student achievement for disadvantaged children not only improves, it can reach levels that are standard for middle-class children.
  • Children from diverse cultural backgrounds tend to do better when parents and professionals collaborate to bridge the gap between the culture at home and the learning institution;
  • Students are more likely to fall behind in academic performance if their parents do not participate in school events, develop a working relationship with their child's educators, or keep up with what is happening in their child's school;
  • The benefits of involving parents are not confined to the early years—there are significant gains at all ages and grade levels;
  • The most accurate predictor of a student's achievement in school is not income or social status, but the extent to which that student's family is able to create a home environment that encourages learning; communicate high, yet reasonable, expectations for their children's achievement and future careers; and become involved in their children's education at school and in the community
Eric Calvert

PBS Teachers | Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century - 0 views

www.pbs.org/...discussionguides

new media games technology engagement motivation PBS

shared by Eric Calvert on 14 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Eric Calvert on 14 Apr 11
     
    Great site with lots of videos and discussion resources. Would be ideal for "Lessons Schools Can Learn from Video Games" course
Eric Calvert

Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media - 1 views

mitpress.mit.edu/...hanging_out.pdf

new media social networking social networks Teens Youth

shared by Eric Calvert on 07 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Eric Calvert on 07 Apr 11
     
    Note: The Danah Boyd chapter might be a good introductory reading for the online engagement course.
Eric Calvert

Student Communication Preferences in a Technology-Enhanced Learning Environment - 2 views

0-vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/...IH3GXJPLVLZQA3DILSFGOADUNGIIV0

media preferences undergraduate students

shared by Eric Calvert on 06 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • The rush to implement eLearning has perhaps found full expression in the failure of Britain's ambitious online university UKeU, which gained only 900 of its target 5,600 students and was officially wound up in 2004, four years (and £50 million] after it was launched. The failure of UKeU has been blamed on its development being technology-led rather than being centred on pedagogical goals and ideals (Education and Skills Committee, 2005).
  • Adoption of eLearning in higher education typically begins with an administrative decision to back a specific Virtual Learning Envirnment (VLE) platform. Teachers are then encouraged to use the platform, usually without a fundamental change to course structure. The VLE is then used as an electronic version of some aspects of the existing course -- for example, using the internet as a repository for lecture handouts. This makes the VLE a convenient resource, but does not fundamentally alter methods of teaching and learning (Murphy 2003).
  • Do students prefer some communication media over others in different situations? If they do the communication method chosen for group project work with a peer may be different from the one selected for time-sensitive communication with an instructor. The answers to these questions have an important impact on instructors designing and leaching classes for a dual audience (i.e., traditional and remote). It also impacts the types of group projects that are assigned and the modes of communication that are supported to service students in these classes.
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  • one of the greatest challenges of a blended learning approach is to generate student engagement outside traditional face-to-face classes: there is a tendency for students to attend classes, but see the online components as optional (University of North Texas, 2005).
  •  Media richness theory is one of the oldest lines of investigation into media preferences. This theory assumes that people behave rationally and will select different media for different communication tasks based upon the characteristics of the media(FN1,2,3,4). According to the theory, rich-media is best for equivocal communication. That is, an ambiguous exchange of subjective or potentially conflicting viewpoints(FN2). In this usage, rich-media is generally defined as multi-channel, synchronous communication with wide language variety and high personal focus. Lean-media, which is normally asynchronous and single-channel, is best for situations where the communicator is seeking to transfer known facts to another or to request facts for specific questions(FN2).
  •  Research by Rao(FN10) modifies media richness theory somewhat and concludes that tasks with a high socio-emotional component are sensitive to media differences while those that are emotionally neutral and task oriented are not sensitive to media differences.
  •  Recent research by Miller and Roche(FN11) examined the question of media preference using a very pragmatic approach that effectively splits the difference between media richness theory and the socio-emotional work by Rao. Two important assumptions were made by this research. First, there will always be multiple media choices and the set of available choices is dynamic. Consequently, it is possible that communicators will switch media toots over time based upon personal preference. Second, a medium is only viable if it is concurrently available to all communicators. So, availability trumps suitability and personal preference. This research surveyed a large population to determine the common factors that influence medium choice. The results identified and assigned importance ratings to nine key factors that affect users' preference for communication tools. The analysis of these factors indicate that a combination of media characteristics, media availability, and user convenience influence medium selection. While this confirms Rao's assertions to a certain extent, it also reemphasizes the role that media characteristics play in medium selection and introduces the notion that multiple factors influence media selection.
  • Methods    We used the free open-source virtual learning environment Moodle. The open source ethos, where all users may contribute and improve the product in response to need and experience, is compatible with knowledge-sharing principles of academia.
  • Twelve research questions were developed for this study. The questions, converted to a form suitable for a survey instrument, are shown below.    Q1: For casual communication with peers. I prefer to communicate___.    Q2: For casual communication with my instructors, I prefer to communicate___.    Q3: For formal communication with peers, I prefer to communicate___.    Q4: For formal communication with my instructors. I prefer to communicate___.    Q5: For time sensitive communication with peers. I prefer to communicate___.    Q6: For time sensitive communication with my instructors. I prefer to communicate___.    Q7: For the communication of short messages with peers. I prefer to communicate___.    Q8: For the communication of short messages with instructors. I prefer to communicate___.    Q9: For communication of a complex topic with peers. I prefer to communicate___.    Q10: For communication of a complex topic with my instructors. I prefer to communicate___.    Q11: For personal communication with peers. I prefer to communicate___.    Q12: For personal communication with my instructors. I prefer to communicate___.    For all questions, the available answers were:in by by by by text by by mail No person telephone instant voicemail message Email (U.S. preference message postal service)
  •  We used four kinds of data to evaluate website usage and effectiveness:
  • i) A printed questionnaire, with questions requiring either scored response or written comments, was given to students after they had finished their end-of-term exam, a strategy that ensures a >95% response rate. Many of the questions were identical in 2004 and 2005 to allow direct comparison before and after the introduction of the virtual learning environment (VLE).ii) To test whether students who received regular reminders about eLearning exercises in face-to-face classes were more likely to undertake online tasks, the tutors of half of the tutorial groups actively encouraged web access and checked if students had completed the SAQs. Formal assessment scores and website access rates were compared using an unpaired t-test (experimental group N= 45, control group N=48).iii) We monitored VLE usage through detailed website access logs which recorded student name, time and date of access, and pages viewed.iv) We tested for a correlation between individual participation in eLearning activities and performance in the formal assessment items for the course, using general linear models to examine the relationship between access rates, SAQ completion rates, SAQ scores, scores in multiple choice tests, and overall score for the course.
  • The intent of these questions was to determine 1) do students have a preferred medium for communicating with the instructor, 2) do students have a preferred medium to interact with other students, 3) does context impact media choice, and 4) are the preferences the same for student to instructor versus student to peer communication.
  •  A survey instrument was developed to include the twelve questions along with four questions to capture non-identifying student characteristics (i.e., gender, major, freshman through senior classification, and comfort with technology). The questionnaire was administered to students currently attending classes in a state supported college of business administration.
  • the student population is best described as 'traditional,' in that they are typically eighteen to twenty-four years old and are working toward their first degree. All students in the business program have at least rudimentary Internet and computer skills. In addition, instructors are required to hold regular office hours and all students and instructors have active email accounts, so both the 'in-person' and the primary technology-based communication channels are guaranteed to exist for all participants.
  • We demonstrated a strong increase in web access rates between 2004, when online material was presented in a non-interactive, text-based format, and 2005, when the online material was an interactive VLE
  • The percentage of students who used the website every week (the target rate) tripled to nearly 30%. Increase in website access did not simply reflect the fact that some information was now disseminated exclusively online: all parts of the VLE were accessed by at least 20% of the class, with up to 70% of students viewing information that was also available in the printed handbook. Similarly, the increase in access was not due to a change in the information available: the text of the online lecture support was similar in both 2004 and 2005, only the mode of presentation changed. We also showed that, although students frequently requested downloadable lecture slides, these 'non-blended' lecture support files had much lower access rates than the 'interactive' lecture support. On average, over two thirds of the class completed the interactive online lessons, but less than a third of the class downloaded the Powerpoint slides
  •  Table 1 indicates that students do indeed have distinct preferences for communication media. Further, the choice of media appears to differ based upon who the communication is with and the context within which the communication takes place.
  •  The results in table 1 indicate that students strongly prefer the rich-media, synchronous communication provided by face-to-face interaction in situations where communication with a high socio-emotional component takes place--namely, in the contexts where the message is complex, formal, or personal. This is true for no less than 72% of the respondents.
  • Student perceptions of the usefulness of the website material increased when the online material was presented as a VLE: the percentage of students giving the website the target score for usefulness increased from 16% to 26%. So the same information was given a higher score for usefulness when presented in an interactive format that promoted regular access to course materials. There was no negative feedback about the lack of a textbook or poor preparation for formal assessments in 2005, as there had been in 2004 when the online material was accessed at a much lower rate. These observations show that by successfully embedding the VLE into the structure of the course, students were actively encouraged to study in their own time, and this contributed positively to their ability to complete the course.
  • Casual conversation, by its nature, would tend to have a high socio-emotional component, and yet, the student preference for casual conversation with the instructor is almost evenly split between 'in-person' (49.6%) and 'email' (43.6%). These two communication media are on opposite ends of the rich-media to lean-media continuum. This pattern is absent in Q1 ('casual with peers') where 53.0% prefer 'in-person' communication while only 15.8% selected 'email'. Clearly, medium choice is not determined strictly by the socio-emotional content of the message.
  • A second noteworthy result concerns alignment with media richness theory, The analysis of some responses directly adhere to the notion that students are rational and will select a media based upon its ability to best carry the message in a particular context.
  •  A third interesting finding is evidenced by the differences in the results between some of the paired context questions. For example, Q1 and Q2 ask the same question about casual conversation with peers and with the instructor. The same is true for Q3 and Q4, Q5 and Q6, etc. If medium selection were based solely on the characteristics of the media or the socio-emotional content of the message, one would expect the percentage results between these paired questions to be roughly equal. They are not in several cases. For example, in Q1 and Q2, 16.2% of the respondents prefer the telephone for casual conversation with peers while only 1.2% would select this medium to communicate with the instructor. In the same question pair, 15.8% of students prefer to use email for casual peer communication while 43.6% use email for the same type of communication with the instructor.
  • Face-to-face encouragement to undertake web-based activities did not increase web usage: the experimental and control groups did not differ significantly in their web access rates (t=0.002, p=0.98) nor in the number of SAQs completed (t=-0.481, p=0.632). However, web access rates for online lessons and SAQs tended to peak on the days of subsequent lectures, throughout the three weeks that they were available online. This suggests that attending face-to-face classes stimulates online access. Data from web logs suggest that it was not necessary to use a limited shelf-life to encourage prompt access, because the majority of the class accessed online material in the week following the lecture, with little evidence of a peak in access just before the lessons were taken offline.
  •  There was no apparent correlation between number of web-pages accessed and student performance in the course (slope=0.136, p=0.62, d.f. = 89). However, there was a significant positive correlation between participation in online self-assessment activities and performance in formal assessment tasks.
  • There are two possible explanations of this result: undertaking the SAQs improved student performance on tests, or good students who perform well in tests are also those who seize the opportunity for self-assessment. Either way, it corroborates the widespread support amongst the student body for SAQs as an effective study tool. Furthermore, performance in SAQs was linked to performance in formal assessments. Figure 3b shows that, of the students that completed one or more SAQs, the percentage of correct SAQs was significantly positively associated with the average score on the multiple-choice tests (slope = 0.569, p=0.001, df=76). Students can therefore regard the SAQs as an accurate indicator of their future performance in formal assessment.
  • Although all online lessons were non-compulsory, an average of two-thirds of the dass completed each online lesson, the majority doing so within a week of the relevant lecture. Students made use of different media for accessing information about the course, using the web pages even when the information was available in printed format. The SAQs were the most successful part of the website, demonstrating that students will embrace the opportunity for regular self-assessment. Over half the class reported that they did the SAQs "often" or "every week", and SAQ completion rates were linked to performance in formal assessment. Online multiple-choice questions provided students with continuous feedback on comprehension and performance, a service that could not easily be replicated in a non-electronic medium.
  • Students were noticeably more self-sufficient when the course support material was presented as an interactive VLE, and staff found they had to spend much less time fielding questions about assessment items. Unlike the previous year, when the same supporting information was available but was used less often by students, there were no negative comments about the lack of a core text, or poor preparation for formal assessments.
  • Of the eight questions with significant results, the two factors that exert the most influence on media choice are student comfort with technology and gender. One or both of these factors show up in seven of the eight significant question scenarios. This indicates that the combination of student gender and technology comfort play a major role in determining media choice. Generally speaking, the results show that students who feel more technically competent are less likely to select the 'in-person' medium. At the same time, males tend to prefer 'in-person' communication over females within the same context.
  • A second notable result of the analysis presented by Table 2 is that student interaction with the instructor tends to be more influenced by gender and comfort with technology than the same interaction with peers. Four of the six instructor related scenario questions indicate significant influence by both the comfort and gender independent variables. A fifth instructor scenario (Q10) is influenced by gender along with the 'emphasis major' factor. This consistency implies that the influence technology comfort and gender exert is magnified in almost all contexts when the communication is with the instructor. This is particularly true concerning student gender. Male students are consistently more likely to select the 'in-person' medium over female students regardless of context when the communication is with the instructor.
  • The implications of these results are that factors other than the characteristics of the medium and the content of the message significantly influence media choice in student-to-peer versus student-to-instructor communication. Evidently, the interaction is more complicated than cither traditional media richness or socio-emotional theory predict.
  • Statistical analysis of the data from the survey indicate that students strongly prefer communicating 'in-person' for complex, formal, and personal messages with both instructors and peers. In addition, there is a distinct preference away from face-to-face communication when the message is short or time sensitive. Further analysis show that students tend to select media "rationally" (i.e., in line with the major theories) for communication with peers. Specifically, they appear to take the characteristics and availability of the medium, their personal comfort with technology, and the context of the message into consideration. The same cannot be said for communication with the instructor. The data indicate that students are significantly influenced by their gender and their personal comfort with technology. Males tend to prefer face-to-face interaction with the instructor more so than females. In addition, the more comfortable the student is with technology, the less likely they are to prefer 'in-person' communication. These results help explain some of the seemingly irrational media preferences concerning communicating with the instructor.
  • hen group projects are used, the groups could be formulated based upon the ability to meet in person and overall comfort with technology, rather than randomly.
  • Eric Calvert on 06 Apr 11
     
    ABSTRACT Universities must be capable of effectively teaching students who attend class in the traditional sense as well as those who learn from distant locations via technology. This places new challenges on instructors who design courses to fit within this hybrid environment. One such challenge is determining which communication media to support and emphasize. A wide variety of communication options are available and student preferences may differ based upon who they are communicating with and the context of the communication. This paper describes an empirical research project to address this question. A survey was administered to 596 undergraduate business students. The results of this project indicate that a student's media preference varies depending upon the characteristics of the medium, the context of the message, and the target of the communication. These results have useful implications to instructors involved in distance education as well as those using traditional course delivery methods.
Eric Calvert

Author: 'iGeneration' requires a different approach to instruction | eSchoolNews.com - 0 views

www.eschoolnews.com/...ferent-approach-to-instruction

middle school iGeneration Rosen generation gap

shared by Eric Calvert on 01 Mar 11 - Cached
  • Today’s middle and high school students learn much differently from students just a few years older—and that’s mainly because they’ve never known a world without the internet or cell phones, says psychology professor and author Larry D. Rosen, whose research could give educators valuable insights into the needs of today’s learners.
  • Rosen said teenagers’ desire for individualized experiences is something they expect will carry over into their education.
  • Rosen agreed that iGeners are constantly connected to their mobile devices. He noted that iGeneration students don’t look at the technology as a tool, the way it’s viewed by older generations—even the so-called Millennial generation that preceded today’s teens—but as an expectation. And this affects the way these students learn.
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  • “If we look at kids who spend their entire day online multitasking, in many ways teachers are still asking them to learn one task at a time and in an old-fashioned way,” he said.
  • Andy Petroski, director of the Learning Technologies Master of Science program at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, said engagement is a key to connecting with today’s students. “These kids are highly engaged and active in their personal world. Traditional school is so far on the other end of the spectrum for them,” he said. “More than any other generation, they are pleading, ‘Engage me,’ … because to sit and listen and do one thing for long periods is so foreign to their daily lives.”
Eric Calvert

Reading Motivation: 10 Elements for Success - 0 views

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reading motivation interventions

shared by Eric Calvert on 01 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • How often a child reads is explained by 3 factors: sufficient resources, early success and motivation. Two indicators of young children’s reading motivation are competency beliefs (beliefs about own abilities) and goal orientation (whether and why a child wants to be a good reader). Reading skills and motivation correlate with and influence one another over time. Motivation to read declines as students enter middle school. A 2004 study of 5 popular remedial programs indicated that the impact of motivation on struggling readers seemed to be largely ignored by the program developers.
  • n a 2001 review of research, Guthrie* identified 10 instructional elements that form the foundation for engagement and motivation in reading:
  • Real-world instruction Autonomy supportCollaborative learningPraise and rewardsInteresting texts
Eric Calvert

6 Technologies That Will Shape Education -- THE Journal - 2 views

thejournal.com/...That-Will-Shape-Education.aspx

HorizonReport education technology future

shared by Eric Calvert on 06 Apr 11 - Cached
  • This year's report cited five challenges that the authors identified as "critical." They include: Inadequate digital media literacy training for teachers; Out of date learning materials and teaching practices; Lack of agreement on how education should evolve, despite widespread agreement that change is needed; A failure of education institutions to adapt to informal education, online education, and home-based learning; and Lack of support for or acknowledgement of forms of learning that usually occur outside the classroom. On this last point, the report said: "Beyond the classroom walls, students can take advantage of online resources, explore ideas and practice skills using games and other programs they may have on systems at home, and interact with their extensive--and constantly available--social networks. Within the classroom, learning that incorporates real life experiences like these is not occurring enough and is too often undervalued when it does take place. This challenge is an important one in K-12 schools, because it results in a lack of engagement in learning on the part of students who are seeking some connection between their world, their own lives, and their experience in school."
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