Dissertation

Web 2.0 and Higher Education

Cunha, Luís António Morão Pinto Simões da

2012

Overview

The emergence of tools like Blogs or Wikis made the creation of online contents much easier than before. The evolving concept of Web 2.0 emphasizes the fact that the user can now easily participate in the delivery of Web contents, taking advantage of existing tools. In this thesis, two empirical studies are described. The first study was conducted with the aim of understanding faculty’s perceived usefulness of Web 2.0 tools for their teaching practices. For this study, an online survey was used which allowed gathering the opinions of 681 teachers from 11 different Portuguese higher education institutions. The integrative models generated from this study revealed that attitudes and self-efficacy (i.e. perception of self-competence) were found positive predictors of faculty’s intentions to use, and actual using Web 2.0 (in general), and Facebook and Blogs (in particular). Social norms were found influential in faculty’s intention to use Web 2.0 (in general), and Facebook, for teaching purposes, but faculty members were only significantly influenced by their peers, and not by their superiors, nor by their students. Furthermore, for Blogs, even peer influence was found non-significant as a predictor of faculty’s intention to use this specific tool in their teaching activities. Women faculty members were slightly less prone to actually use Web 2.0 tools for their teaching activities, and the same gender effect was found for the specific case of Facebook and of Blogs. The second study was performed with the student population. Data from a sample of 550 higher education students were collected on five different higher education institutions, in the classroom environment. In addition to instruments measuring the use of Web 2.0 (in general) and Facebook (in particular), a group of eight additional scales enabled the assessment of psychological variables whose relevance for understanding students educational use of Web 2.0 and Facebook was explored. In the integrative models resulting from this study, it was shown that students’ attitudes and intentions to use of Web 2.0 to supplement their in-class learning were positively affected by social self-efficacy, identity collective self-esteem, and the dimension of self-concept labeled “impulsivity / activity”. Negative effects on students’ attitudes and intentions to use Web 2.0 in this context were found for public collective self-esteem, and for general self-efficacy. The students’ educational usage of Facebook was positively influenced by their satisfaction with life, identity collective self-esteem, and institutional dimensions of academic experiences. Public collective self-esteem was a negative predictor of the educational usage of Facebook by students. Although statistically significant, the effects of the mentioned psychological variables were relatively weak.

• Publisher: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
• Subject: Educational technology / Web Studies
• ISBN: 9781392804599, 1392804590