Introduction Technology has become a vital part of society. Technology is rapidly growing and is the future. The more way we learn to innovate, design, understand, and communicate using technology, the more successful are upcoming youth and adult learners will be able to contribute to society as a whole.
The study of online learning using new media is an excellent way to enhance learning. As we all know that online degrees are highly sought after due to the flexibility that they have for the working family. This study will provide valuable information on how online learners accept the use of new media.
Dr. Newberry at California State University of San Bernardino, created a research study to examine the how new media and online courses in education. Three questions were derived; the study was based on these questions:
1). Is there a relationship between the amount of portable media (podcast) a student consumes and their desire for portable media use in online learning?
2). What level of involvement in planning, organizing, and making media choices do adult online learner desire?
3). Is the use of collaboration to comment on other students' viewed as beneficial by online students?
A variety of subjects were used to collaborate the information used in the study.
Literature Review
This literature review will study the three topics related to online education. As new media and technology merges in education educator, administrators and other school related officials must be informed. The three areas are adult learning, new media in online education and social presence and learning. It is important to look at how different variations are enhancing students; online learning experience. As new technology merges new media, blogs and podcast are becoming are modifying student to teacher communication and interaction online. Technology is not replace, but enhance the deliver of information. Due to the fact that there are so many changing ways of technology, it is important to look at many different ways types for media that could be used for online learning. The goal is to prepare each student for online learning tools and new media as it arises.
Adult Learning and Andragogy
Andragogy is the process of the adult learning process, due to the fact that adult learners bring experiences, biases opinions and their own personal experience related to the classrooms. However, everyone doesn’t support the adult learning process by Knowles. His theory on adult learning and andragogy was created based on four key principles; self concept, experience, a readiness to learn and orientation to learning. The way in which adult learners learn is important to the effective application of new media in distance learning. As adult learners grow to a more dependent student and begin to look for ways that encourage self-direction. Adult learners are apprehensive about some part of technology, such as chatting, instant messaging and texting. This new type of media is considers by some “teenager stuff “. According to (Spark 2006), “No matter what types of new technologies emerge in society, education is an absolute endeavor for every citizen living in this world” A greater understanding of how adults learn, must be centered rather than content oriented. Technologies have also made business more productive incorporating employees with online timecards, processing of work details, shipping and etc…
New Media Online Education
New media has grown so fast that many find it to be intimidating. The intimidation factor is due to fearing the unknown. This effects the willingness of the instructor to expose themselves to the find out the benefits of new media tool and open-minded to the challenges of familiarizing themselves with the tools. The question that frequently arises is “is these new tool effective“? Another concern is what type of media tools do you use to that not only meet the needs to instruction, but also the needs of the student. Podcasting is one of the newest media tools, it is very interacting and mobile. Podcasting allows the students to not only download these files on a PC, but also on a ipod . The only disadvantage is the download speed process can be very slow depending on the unit that is being transferred.
Social Presence and learning with New Media
Social presence and learning with online learning, has it many advantages and disadvantages. Instructor’s implemented pod casting into their curriculum, attempt to still have the class feel. If the instructor could integrated student interaction and collaboration, this would possibly assist in the interest of retention and interest of the student. Online learning has shown that it encourages student we are reluctant to speak in class are more willing to participate in blogs, discussion boards and other online media interactive tools, as well as feed back. However, according to El Mansour & Mupinga (2007), there is often a sense of feeling lost in cyberspace when looking at the negative characteristics of online learning. Even though, students are given the opportunity to participate in group discussions and other activities. Mansour feels as though they are still missing a large part of “body language”. Body language is a form of communication and how can we communicate with someone if we can understand the true intent of the persons comments. Misinterpretations can often be relayed, because the simple nod, smile or just the simple face to face interaction are missing. To ensure student don’t lack social presence, instructors must guidelines and a sense of togetherness within the class.ConclusionNew media and social presence should be collaborated in the traditional methods. Since there are many new instructional and educational tools it is upmost important to ensure that the instruction, being new media or the traditional pen and pencil creates a learning environment that is intrusive to implementation of new ideas, being blogs, pod cast, discussion boards, or just simply a group project.
Methods
This research study was on the investigation of online learning using new media. Since online degress have become a highly sought after way of education it is imperative that studies are conducted to ensure the effectiveness. The methods used to explore this research are recruitment process, instrument development, and data collection.ParticipationThe recruitment process was a very important part of the study. The subjects that were to participant needed to be highly educated and have directly knowledge about the field of education. E-mail and face-to-face contacts were made. The first line of contact was e-mails with an explanation about the study and the class it was going to be used for. A survey link was attached to the e-mails notifying them that the survey was voluntary and anonymous. The other form of contact was face to face, a brief explanation was of the importance, the purpose and the confidentiality of the survey was given.The students were asked to submit numerous potential research questions on the topic of online learning. After a thorough review, Dr. Newberry using his expertise in online learning using new media several research questions were composed.
1). Is there a relationship between the amount of portable media (podcast) a student consumes and their desire for portable media use in online learning?
2). What level of involvement in planning, organizing, and making media choices do adult online learner desire?
3). Is the use of collaboration to comment on other students' viewed as beneficial by online students?
4). What media types do students express a preference for using for a variety of activities related to instructors-student interaction, student interaction, and student- content interaction?
A 5 - point likert scale was used for the survey, 1 to 5 scale - with five being the highest.Each participants received and URL address to gain access into the survey and additional information regarding it being completely volunteer and anonymous.
Results
To answer research question 1 we are going to examine the correlation between item 2 and the three items directly related to using podcasts in courses items 3, 6 and 9.
Correlations
V2 V3 V6 V9
V2
Pearson Correlation 1 .609(**) .465(**) .293(*)
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .019
N64 64 64 64
V3 Pearson Correlation .609(**) 1 .656(**) .463(**)
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000
N 64 64 64 64
V6 Pearson Correlation .465(**) .656(**) 1 .407(**)
Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .001
N 64 64 64 64
V9 Pearson Correlation .293(*) .463(**) .407(**) 1
Sig. (2-tailed) .019 .000 .001
N 64 64 64 64
** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Reporting the correlations:
Correlation coefficients were computed between the items related to respondent prior use of non-music podcasts and use of portable podcasts for course related purposes. All three correlations were significant at the .05 level. The correlations between prior non-music podcast use and instructional use of podcasts were positive meaning that as respondents reported more use of non-music podcasts they also reported higher preference for use of podcasts in classes. The results of the correlations are presented in table 1.
_____________________________________________________________________
Podcast/Tasks Player Enhanced
_____________________________________________________________________
Prior Use .609* .465* .293*
* P<.05 _____________________________________________________________________ Table 1 Correlations Between Prior Non-Music Podcast Use and Preference for Portability in Class Podcast Use (N = 64)
To answer Research Question 2 we will examine the mean results for items 11-52 which were the items we developed for the use of different technologies for common course related communications.
Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
V11 64 1 5 4.70 .749 V12 64 1 5 2.77 1.244 V13 64 1 5 3.03 1.391 V14 64 1 5 2.48 1.098 V15 64 1 5 2.95 1.290 V16 64 1 5 3.33 1.209 V17 64 1 5 2.75 1.234 V18 64 2 5 4.36 .932 V19 64 1 5 2.91 1.281 V20 64 1 5 3.41 1.269 V21 64 1 5 2.58 1.152 V22 64 1 5 2.80 1.143 V23 64 1 5 3.55 1.272 V24 64 1 5 2.78 1.253 V25 64 3 5 4.72 .519 V26 64 1 5 2.56 1.344 V27 64 1 5 2.73 1.312 V28 64 1 5 2.31 1.220 V29 64 1 5 2.56 1.355 V30 64 1 5 2.70 1.422 V31 64 1 5 2.48 1.272 V32 64 2 5 4.75 .563 V33 64 1 5 2.50 1.380 V34 64 1 5 3.00 1.480 V35 64 1 5 2.13 1.106 V36 64 1 5 2.33 1.261 V37 64 1 5 3.14 1.500 V38 64 1 5 2.14 1.180 V39 64 1 5 4.22 .967 V40 64 1 5 2.67 1.346 V41 64 1 5 3.41 1.477 V42 64 1 5 2.33 1.183 V43 64 1 5 2.58 1.295 V44 64 1 5 3.67 1.381 V45 64 1 5 2.36 1.252 V46 64 1 5 4.11 1.170
V47 64 1 5 3.22 1.453 V48 64 1 5 3.34 1.300 V49 64 1 5 3.17 1.340 V50 64 1 5 3.55 1.356 V51 64 1 5 3.39 1.410 V52 64 1 5 2.66 1.263
Another way to look at this is to look at the means for each technology across all the items.
Email items 11, 18, 25, 32, 39, 46
Video Conference items 12, 19, 26, 33, 40, 47
Blog items 13, 20, 27, 34, 41, 48
Podcast (audio only) items 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49
Podcast (enhanced) items 15, 22, 29, 36, 43, 50
Threaded discussion items 16, 23, 30, 37, 44, 51 V
oice over internet items 17, 24, 31, 38, 45, 52
Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
email 64 1.67 5.00 4.4766 .61926
video 64 1.00 5.00 2.7708 1.03489
blog 64 1.00 5.00 3.1536 1.13712
pod_audio 64 1.00 4.83 2.5000 .92820
pod_enhanced 64 1.00 5.00 2.7943 1.04051
threaded 64 1.00 5.00 3.2969 1.09813
voip 64 1.00 5.00 2.5286 1.02118 Valid N (listwise) 64
Reporting these data:
Means were computed for each of the technology items across the various course related communication tasks. Email was rated as most preferred (M=4.45, SD=.62), threaded discussion was next preferred (M= 3.30, SD =1.10) with blogs almost being rated almost as highly (M=3.15, SD=1.13) and near the middle of the scale. Enhanced podcasts (M= 2.79, SD=1.04), video conferencing (M=2.77, SD=1.03), audio only podcasts (M=2.50, SD=.93) and voice over Internet (M=2.52, SD=1.02) were below the middle of the 5 point Likert scale indicating that they were not preferred for course related communication. These means are reported in table 2. _____________________________________________________
Technology Mean Standard Deviation _____________________________________________________
Email 4.45 .62
Threaded Discussion 3.30 1.10
Blogs 3.15 1.13
Enhanced Podcasts 2.79 1.04
Video Conferencing 2.77 1.03
Audio Only Podcasts 2.50 .93
Voice Over Internet 2.52 1.02 ______________________________________________________
Table 2 Means and Standard Deviations of Technologies Used for Course Related Communication (N=64)
To answer Research Question 3 we will examine means for items 53-56 which were the items we developed related to andragogy.
Descriptive Statistics
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
V53 64 1 5 4.28 .983
V54 64 1 5 3.77 1.165
V55 64 1 5 3.80 1.198
V56 64 1 5 4.41 .886 Valid N (listwise) 64
Discussion
The results of the study Online Learning – New Media showed significant relationships for all the research questions. The overall results were that adult prefers more control in organizing, grading and media choices in classes.
The first question: “Is there a relationship between previous non –music portable media consumption and receptiveness for portable media use in online learning. The objective was to find the correlations between the question and the subjects’ desires. It was clear that there is a relationship non-music portable media consumption and receptiveness for portable media use in online learning. The results indicated that many students use portable media devices almost daily and are comfortable with that part of technology and learning. Students have ipods, mp3 player, cell phones with a variety of technology that can be applied to online learning. Therefore, the majority of the students unknowingly have prior experience and skills that would be used for portable media in online learning. The relationship is obvious the subjects’ are more comfortable using media that they acquire on a daily basis.
The second question for this study was: What media type do students prefer to use different course activities related to instructor – student interaction, student-student interaction, and student-content interaction? The data displayed a pattern among the results that showed email is clearly the preferred technology for all interaction in online classes. This comes to no surprise. E-mail is something that the majorities of the subjects’ are familiar with and use almost on a daily basis. Email is more commonly used by everyone when compared to podcasts, viop, blogs and other form technology based communications. We would all agree that it is not the best type of media interactions, but it is the most familiar with adults.
The third question in the study was: What level of involvement is planning, organizing, grading and making media choices do adult online learners desires? The results to this questions was obvious, many adults preferred to have control over their online education. Adults benefits form making media choices. Choosing the medial will increase their social presence in the class, and the interaction without felling illiterate about technological skills being used. The adult learner basically likes to have more control over their online education, as far as due dates, assignments, type of media used and grading. These attributes are possible for online learning, but could create a challenge in a graduate program.
The results of the study will assist in the future studies, developer for online courses and instructor in effectiveness. The change of subjects and the position of the question in the survey may have a different set of results. By changing the subjects, this could possible eliminated so many unanswered questions. For future research study, it is important for the questions to have a reasons behind them, possible real world scenario and participants who have prior knowledge in the subject at hand. Adult learning can become easily discourage regarding education, therefore it is important that we give them choices without negatively effecting their overall educational experience.
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Appendix
Here is a list of the survey items: 1
Do you own a personal media player (iPod etc.)?
2 Listen to non-music podcasts on a portable media player.
3 Listen to course podcasts while I engaged in other tasks such as commuting, working, walking etc.
4 Read a transcript of a course podcast on my computer instead of listening to the audio version. 5 Print a transcript of a course podcast to use as a listening guide and to help me focus on the podcast content.
6 Listen to an audio only podcast on a portable media player.
7 Listen to an audio only podcast on a computer.
8 Use a podcast that included visual aides such as charts, graphs and images to help illustrate the content of the podcast.
9 Use a podcast that included visual aides such as charts, graphs and images on a portable media player.
10 Use a podcast that included visual aides such as charts, graphs and images on a computer.
Communicating with the instructor about problems in class:
11 Email12 Video Conference
13 Blog (Text Based)
14 Podcast (Audio Only)
15 Podcast (Enhanced with Graphics)
16 Threaded Discussion or Bulletin Board (Text Based)
17 Voice Over Internet (Example: Skype, Audio Only) Communicating with other students to
learn more about them:
18 Email19 Video Conference
20 Blog (Text Based)
21 Podcast (Audio Only)
22 Podcast (Enhanced with Graphics)
23 Threaded Discussion or Bulletin Board (Text Based)
24 Voice Over Internet (Example: Skype, Audio Only) Receiving grades and instructor
evaluations of my work:
25 Email26 Video Conference
27 Blog (Text Based)
28 Podcast (Audio Only)
29 Podcast (Enhanced with Graphics)
30 Threaded Discussion or Bulletin Board (Text Based)
31 Voice Over Internet (Example: Skype, Audio Only) Submitting my assignments to the
instructor for grading:
32 Email33 Video Conference
34 Blog (Text Based)
35 Podcast (Audio Only)
36 Podcast (Enhanced with Graphics)
37 Threaded Discussion or Bulletin Board (Text Based)
38 Voice Over Internet (Example: Skype, Audio Only) Sharing my assignments with other
students for peer review:
39 Email40 Video Conference
41 Blog (Text Based)
42 Podcast (Audio Only)
43 Podcast (Enhanced with Graphics)
44 Threaded Discussion or Bulletin Board (Text Based)
45 Voice Over Internet (Example: Skype, Audio Only) Receiving course lectures and course
related content:
46 Email47 Video Conference
48 Blog (Text Based)
49 Podcast (Audio Only)
50 Podcast (Enhanced with Graphics)
51 Threaded Discussion or Bulletin Board (Text Based)
52 Voice Over Internet (Example: Skype, Audio Only)
53 Having a lot of choice about the assignments that I do for the class.
54 Having a lot of choice about how assignments that I do for the class are graded or evaluated.
55 Having a lot of choice about the due dates for assignments in the class.
56 Having a lot of choice about the type of media or communications technologies used in the class.
