Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is: (1) to examine Australian university students' awareness of the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies, and (2) to investigate the factors that influence students to adopt Web 2.0 technologies to supplement in-class learning, using the theoretical foundations of both Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour (DTPB). Web survey data of 60 students studying in 14 universities and 1 undergraduate college across Australia were used to examine the aforementioned purposes. Findings indicate that most students in this study's sample were aware of the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies to supplement in-class instructions. The findings also indicate that students' attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control were strong determinants of their intention to use Web 2.0 technologies.
TopScope Of The Study
This study explores the students' perception of the suitability of blogs, wikis, social networks and social bookmarking to supplement in-class learning according to six criteria statements. These are: (1) improve students' learning, (2) increase student-faculty interactions, (3) increase student-student interactions, (4) increase student satisfaction with the course, (5) improve students writing, (6) ease of integration into university courses (Baylor & Ritchie, 2002; Hartshorne & Ajjan, 2009). Thus, the aim is to allow respondents to indicate the fitness of each technology in relation to the above mentioned criteria, in which the categorisation of these technologies can be attained from the students themselves. Moreover, it should be noted that providing an in-depth analysis of the possible types of use and interaction with these technologies by students is beyond the scope of this study.
Key Terms in this Chapter
TBP: Theory of Planned Behaviour. Such a theory aims to explain human behaviours by investigating various antecedents of a given behaviour.
Social Bookmarking: Refer to Internet applications that allow users manage favourite web pages while surfing the Internet. These applications allow the user to keep and annotate certain web pages of interest in order to use them at a later time (e.g., Delicious “ https://delicious.com ”).
Blogs: Are websites that are generated by an individual or a group and allow contents to be frequently updated in the form of posts (Blogger “ https://www.blogger.com ”).
Wikis: Are websites created in a collaborative manner by multiple users. They permit users to modify, update or delete contents (e.g., Wikipedia “ http://en.wikipedia.org AU19: The URL http://en.wikipedia.org has been redirected to https://en.wikipedia.org/. Please verify the URL. ”).
Path Analysis: A statistical method used for evaluating the cause and effects relationships of variables included in one's research model with the aid of correlational data and path coefficient analysis.
Web 2.0 Technologies: Refer to Internet applications that depend heavily on user-generated content and allow people to dynamically alter and/or refine content of web pages.
DTPB: Decomposed Theory of Planned Behaviour. An extension of the theory of planned behaviour that aims to explain individuals’ behaviour toward using new technologies.
Social Network: Refer to websites that enable users to communicate, interact, and share information with other users within the same website network (e.g., Facebook “ https://www.facebook.com ”).