Effects of Presenting Peers’ Learning Progress in e-Learning: a Social Facilitation Perspective

• Main Authors: Hong-LeokHo, 何鴻略
• Other Authors: Yueh-Min Huang
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/79817132788089196200

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 工程科學系碩博士班 === 98 === This work is an interdisciplinary study of information technology, education and social psychology, under the main theme electronic learning. Electronic learning (e-learning) is the next generation of learning. It provides comprehensive supports to students and can overcome geographical and time limitations compared to traditional classroom learning. There is a dramatic difference between traditional classroom learning and e-learning. One of the significant discrepancies is the nature of the social context, which is also the focus of this thesis. The lack of in-person contacts in e-learning does not isolate students from the social thoroughly, yet with the assistance of technology, there is still room for much more creative learning activities that facilitates the interactivity between students. A large body of studies have been carried out to investigate the effects of various types of social interaction in the e-learning environment. In this study, Social presence theory and social presence theory is reviewed and an experiment was designed to examine the influence of information about peers’ progress on students’ learning effect and learning speed. Other variables such as personality traits were concerned in the study. Forty-four students of an elective course in a senior high school at Tainan City, Tainan participated in the experiment. The result shows that students’ learning effect is not affected significantly by information about peers’ progress, whereas, the speed of reading learning materials were affected by information about peers’ progress. Results were discussed with social presence theory and social presence theory.