Article Preview
TopIntroduction
Today’s young people are exposed to levels of media content never before seen in human history yet very little research has been done into the effects of the phenomenon (Lutz, Ranzini, & Meckel, 2014; Rodriguez, Gummadi, & Schoelkopf, 2014). From the perspective of the educational professional, this growth in media and media modalities means that teaching and learning need to be redesigned from the bottom-up to be centered around these new information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to be best-suited to exploit the potential for collaboration, interaction, and global communication (Pimmer, Mateescu, & Gröhbiel, 2016). Even though there is no shortage of potential reforms, as there are seemingly as many schools of thought as there are educational researchers (Roth & Lee, 2007), strong barriers preventing wholesale institutional transformations remain (Reid, 2014) . It is from this reality, with the need for redesigning the curriculum to best suit digital natives in mind, that the online holistic environment—e-Holistic (e-HO) —was developed (Lee, Pan, & Liao, 2011).
This research is designed to improve the limitations of holistic education which a number of studies have suggested. For example, very few empirical studies have focused on students’ perceptions and experiences of holistic education in higher education (Ting, Pan, & Yang, 2008). Pan and his colleagues (Pan, Pan, Lee, & Chang, 2010; Pan & Wei, 2006) developed a qualitative method for investigating students' holistic education. However, they point out as one of their research limitations that holistic education needs to be examined through quantitative methods (Pan et al., 2010). Their recommendations resulted in few studies (e.g., Lee, Pan, Liao, Chen, & Walters, 2013) relying on a quantitative approach to investigate holistic learning. Moreover, the integration of holistic education with technology is rarely implemented because of the difficulty developing an environment for students in which to immerse themselves (Lee, Pan, & Liao, 2011).
This particular report, in response to Pan, Pan, Lee, and Chang’s (2010) call, is to provide a complement of better qualitative and quantitative data for the promotion of online holistic education. The holistic environment (e-HO) grew out of a desire to have an online university platform which could be controlled entirely by the sponsoring university so that it would be free of commercial pressures, questions of control, and privacy concerns, as well as being in accord with the principles of holistic education (Lee, Pan, & Liao, 2011). E-HO is an integrative learning environment embracing a full spectrum of generation education, including music, art, science, history, and literature.
Because literature is often abstract to seek the meaning of life and philosophy, especially a poem, the literature education module on e-HO under investigation in this study was organized according to Miller’s (2007) three principles of holistic education namely, balance, inclusion, and connection, which would serve as the theoretical framework for this study. Additionally, the activities for e-HO’s literature module including group-created poetry, interactive feedback, and reflection toward selected texts, were to be analyzed via a qualitative approach to provide a better understanding of online holistic learning. Finally, the quantitative data in this study was to be analyzed according to the theoretical model from Miller (2007) by using structural equation modeling (SEM) (Lei & Wu, 2007).