Session 6

Activity

In this activity, we were instructed to design a small-scale study to identify key issues related to teaching and learning with mobile technologies. Here is our result.

Whether online courses including discussion forum can improve students’ learning motivation?

Introduction 

Motivation is related to successful learning. Many researches highlight the importance of motivation in affecting learning. For example, Tallent-Runnels et al (2006) noted that an understanding of learners’ motivation is the key factor for effective instructional design. Researches have shown that learner motivation associated with a variety of important learning consequences such as persistence (Vallerand &Bissonnette, 1992), retention (Lepper & Cordova, 1992), achievement (Eccles et al., 1993), and course satisfaction (Fujita-Starck &Thompson, 1994). It can be concluded that motivation should be emphasized in the implementation of online learning. 

As online learning opportunities continue to grow, it is important to explore how to sustain learner engagement and improve their motivation. However, some online learning platforms heavily rely on lecture video. A study suggests that it is critical to design more interaction among learners and between learners and lecturers to improve the quality of learning(Richardson et al., 2015). One of the useful tools for this purpose is an online forum for discussion. With the help of online discussion forums, learners can exchange opinions and form teams to collaborate and gain a better understanding of the material (Wise, Cui, Jin, & Vytasek, 2017). However, do interaction in online learning affect student motivation? This study aims to explore whether interaction in online learning can affect student motivation, and how interaction can affect the motivation. 

Method

Participants

The participating university was a public university in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China. At the time of study, there were about 144 freshmen majoring in physics who will be selected to join the project. Students in this project worked together to learn online physics courses through the platform of Coursera. 

School administration randomly selected 60 students from the freshman, and we randomly separated them into two groups. The first group called Strong Interaction Group(SIG), and the second group called Non-interaction Group(NIG). All the selected students had ownership of a computer at home, and many of them used computers regularly.

Procedure

Both groups would attend the physics courses through Coursera for four weeks, an hour a day twice a week. They needed to finish the assigned courses each week whenever and wherever they wanted. The content and form of the online courses for the two groups were in complete conformity with each other, but the SIG were given an online forum which had a teaching assistant to answer their questions about their homework (NIG needed to finish their homework without the assistance from online forum). The table 1. below summarizes the events during the whole study.

Table 1. Events during the whole study

Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4
(1)introduction the courses to the two groups	(1)attending the courses on platform of Coursera(SIG would be given an online forum)	(1)attending the courses on platform of Coursera (SIG would be given an online forum)	(1) implement a motivation scale
(2)implement a motivation scale			(2) implement a questionnaire to investigate the completion rate of online courses

Data Analysis

Before this experiment, we made two hypotheses: 1)Students with high learning motivation have a higher probability of obtaining course completion certificates than those with low learning motivation. 2)By adding online forum to online courses can improve the completion of the course and can cultivate students’ learning motivation, especially for those with low learning motivation. After this experiment, we will get 120 pieces of motivation scales and 60 pieces of questionnaires. The data collected in pre-test and post-test for each of these two groups will be analyzed with rapidminer software. We could apply  ANOVA to determine whether there is a significant difference between the two groups’ motivation scales. If the p-value of one of the methods is smaller than 5%, then we could conclude that at 95% confidence level, there is a difference between the two teaching methods.

References

Tallent-Runnels, M., Thomas, J., Lan, W., Cooper, S., Ahern, T., Shaw, S., & Liu, X. (2006). Teaching Courses Online: A Review of the Research. Review of Educational Research, 76(1), 93-135.

Vallerand, R., & Blssonnette, R. (1992). Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Amotivational Styles as Predictors of Behavior: A Prospective Study. Journal of Personality, 60(3), 599-620.

Lepper, M. R., & Cordova, D. I. . (1992). A desire to be taught: instructional consequences of intrinsic motivation. Motivation and Emotion, 16(3), 187-208.

Eccles, J. S., Midgley, C., Wigfield, A., Buchanan, C. M., Reuman, D., & Flanagan, C., et al. (1993). Development during adolescence. the impact of stage-environment fit on young adolescents’ experiences in schools and in families. Am Psychol, 48(2), 90-101.

JA Fujita-Starck. (1994). The effects of motivation and classroom environment on the satisfaction of noncredit continuing education students. air 1994 annual forum paper. Adult Education, 2(3), 26.

Richardson, J. C., Koehler, A. A. , Besser, E. D., Secil, C., Jieun, L., & Mueller, C. M. . (2015). Conceptualizing and investigating instructor presence in online learning environments. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(3).

Wise, A. F. , Cui, Y. , Wan, Q. J., & Vytasek, J. . (2016). Mining for gold: identifying content-related mooc discussion threads across domains through linguistic modeling. The Internet and Higher Education, 32, 11-28.

Vallerand, Robert & Pelletier, Luc & Blais, MR & Brière, Nathalie & Senécal, Caroline & Vallieres, Evelyne. (1992). The Academic Motivation Scale: A Measure of Intrinsic, Extrinsic, and Amotivation in Education. Educational and Psychological Measurement. 52. 1003-1003. 10.1177/0013164492052004025.