Research Article
Abdullah S. Alshalawi
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 14, Issue 2, Article No: ep361
ABSTRACT
As the statistics show, use of social media networks (SMNs) are very common among college students worldwide. According to a report by Hootsuite, Saudi Arabia was ranked as the number-one country in the growth of social media users. With the advancement of technology and internet speed, investigating how SMNs affect students has become an absolute necessity. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the influence of social media networks (SMNs) on the academic performance of undergraduate students across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, taking gender differences into account. An invitation email to participate in the online survey was sent to all undergraduate students at five public universities in Saudi Arabia. In total, 453 students from five public universities participated in this study. The results suggested that female students tend to spend more time on SMNs for general purposes and academic purposes than male students. In regard to multitasking with SMNs during schoolwork and social media usage intensity, the results showed no significant differences between male and female students. Finally, the regression analysis showed a positive relationship between students’ academic performance and SMNs usage intensity after gender and high school GPA were controlled for.
Keywords: social media, learning performance, gender studies, mobile learning
Research Article
Waleed Alenezi, Thomas M. Brinthaupt
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 14, Issue 1, Article No: ep340
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to explore the use of social media by students in the Faculty of Education, University of Kuwait. The study was conducted within the context of the socio-cultural characteristics of Kuwait, and was underpinned by Alsaied’s (2017) Social Media - Learning Performance model, designed for female Arab students. A volunteer sample of 35 Kuwaiti undergraduate students (88.6% female) was interviewed. Students reported frequently using social media informally for socialization and entertainment, but less frequently as a formal educational tool. Most of the students perceived that social media facilitated interaction with peers, interaction with faculty, engagement, and collaborative learning. However, technical difficulties, and certain negative attitudes towards women using social media, were identified. We recommend that Kuwait University needs to harness the full benefits of social media for teaching and learning and to formulate official guidelines to control the use of social media by all faculty members and students.
Keywords: social media, Kuwait, learning performance, interaction with peers, interaction with faculty, student engagement, collaborative learning
Research Article
Cheng-Jui Tseng, Tzu-Chia Chen
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 12, Issue 2, Article No: ep277
ABSTRACT
In response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, companies around the world have suspended on-site jobs and adopted remote operations. Education and training in some companies are also being carried out through web-based teaching. In addition to bringing new challenges to traditional education and training, web-based teaching platforms also provide a wealth of information sources and application channels for corporate education and training. This study targeted service staff in the service industry as subjects, and incorporated three types of teaching methods into the research design, namely video tutorial, computer-aided teaching and web-based teaching. ANOVA and stepwise regression are then used to analyze the learning motivation, learning attitude and learning performance in an integrated comparison. The results showed that in the service industry, using web-based teaching to conduct employee training for service staff had a substantial impact on improving their learning performance.
Keywords: video tutorial, computer-aided teaching, web-based teaching, learning motivation, learning attitude, learning performance
Research Article
Kevser Hava, Mehmet Fikret Gelibolu
CONT ED TECHNOLOGY, Volume 9, Issue 4, pp. 390-404
ABSTRACT
With the advent of portable technological devices such as mobile phones and tablets, online learning environments have become widespread at schools. This, in turn, has resulted in the emergence of a new learning environment: flipped classrooms. The flipped classroom could be defined as a modern learning environment where teaching content is presented to students through online sources outside the school. The present study examined the impact of digital citizenship instruction through the flipped classroom model on various variables such as learning performance, self-regulated learning, self-directed learning, and information literacy. The study employed a quasi-experimental research design in which pre-tests and post-tests were applied to both research and control groups. The participants were 59 teacher candidates who were freshman undergraduates at Bozok University. During a five-week implementation process, research group students performed certain activities related to digital citizenship while the control group learned digital citizenship via traditional methods. The results showed that the flipped classroom model had a significant effect on only learning performance. No difference were observed between research and control groups in terms of self-regulated learning, self-directed learning, and information literacy variables.
Keywords: Digital citizenship, Flippped classroom, Learning performance, Self-regulated learning, Self-directed learning, Information literacy