As part of my continuing journey in education I am now studying
towards a PGCE (PCET) at UWTSD in Swansea. Today was the first day of a new
module, ICT, which looks at the use of technology in education, and one of our
first tasks was to create a blog.
This reminded me that I started a blog a while back but had
added very little content. As a result of the lesson I revisited that blog and
added a post from previous research we carried out here at UWTSD (then 'Swansea
Metropolitan University') into student engagement with virtual learning environments (VLEs). The research was presented at the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) Conference 2013. A further presentation on a different aspect of the research built on previous research on VLE use at SMU: Student engagement with VLEs: why and why not (Hutchings and Grey, 2013).
From the quantitative data we concluded that students tend to avoid
using VLEs for more challenging topics - in this case cognitive psychology. Qualitative data in the form of semi-structured interviews revealed that students prefer using social
media such as facebook to communicate with their cohort about course-related matters,
and avoid using chat or discussion boards built in to the university VLE.
This fits with the technology
acceptance model (TAM) for most new students. If they already use social media
for communication there is little perceived usefulness in learning another
system for a similar purpose; therefore attitude toward using is reduced and
actual system use consequently lower.
Technology
Acceptance Model (Davis, Bagozzi & Washaw, 1989).
