Self Paced Learners Meet Social Software: An Exploration of Learners’ Attitudes, Expectations and Experience
Abstract:
Social networking and communications tools have become widely used in entertainment and social applications and there is growing interest in their use in formal education applications. Distance education and especially those types that are based on self-paced programming models may be the biggest beneficiaries of the use of these new tools to provide previously unavailable capacity for student-student and student-teacher interaction. However, little is known about students’ interest, expectation and expertise using these tools. In this study the results of an online questionnaire (n=967) completed by undergraduate students enrolled in self-paced distance education programming are presented. The paper concludes that these students have very diverse views and experiences - however a majority are interested in using these tools to enhance their learning experiences. We also describe the relationship between expertise and expectation - the greater use and experience of learners, the more they expect and desire to have educational social software used in their formal education programming.
