Juhani Rautopuro, Paivi Atjonen, Sami Puurtinen & Petja Pyykkonen

1

Students' Selection Between Virtual and Traditional exam

Factors Explaining the Preferences to Choose the Study Mode

Rautopuro, Juhani

Senior Assistant, University of Joensuu, Department of Applied Education

P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland

Atjonen, Paivi;

Professor, University of Joensuu, Department of Education

P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland

Puurtinen, Sami;

M.Ed., University of Joensuu, Department of Applied Education

P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland

Pyykkonen, Petja

M.Ed., University of Joensuu, Department of Applied Education

P.O. Box 111, 80101 Joensuu, Finland

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, UniversityCollegeDublin, 7-10 September 2005

ABSTRACT

The main aim of this study was to find out factors which explain the preferences of teacher students to study the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in education. According to reviewed research literature computer anxiety, computer confidence computer self-efficacy, for example, combined with some background variables (say, gender, subject and experiences in working with computers) may explain the preferences to use computers or to avoid them. Avoiding performance is problematic when thinking the prospective teachers’ tasks as users of ICT in enriching teaching-learning processes.

The data for this study was collected at the University of Joensuu, Finland, among the teacher students from five faculties who enrolled the course "Information Technology and Learning" in autumn 2003. Altogether 110 students decided to participate in a traditional book exam and 58 chose an opportunity of a virtual course in WebCT environment (university's digital platform) when trying carry out the course.

The results of the analyses show that there are some differences between genders and the students that select different mode of the course. Male students reported higher levels of computer self-efficacy and pictured themselves more certain in the use of computers than female students did. Similarly, the students selecting the virtual course reported higher levels of computer self-efficacy, they saw the benefits of use of ICT in education more positively, trusted themselves in using computers and found the virtual course more convenient compared to traditional exam than the students selecting the traditional exam.

The final modeling of the selection of the mode of exam showed that the probability for selecting the virtual course was lower for the students in the Faculties of Education and Humanities when compared to students of other faculties (mainly the Faculty of Sciences). In addition, computer anxiety decreased the desire to select a virtual course.

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the Finnish national strategy of education, training and research in the information society (years 2004-2006), the reasonable use of information and communication technology (abbr. ICT) in teaching and learning should be a part of schools and educational institutions everyday life in 2007. Finland is well-known as a country of high technology where educational institutions have already established a fairy good technological infrastructure and where extensive number of ICT courses have been available both in the pre-service and in-service teacher education.

1.1General Rationale and Context of the Research

Teachers and their technical-pedagogical qualifications are in the focus when the increased and advanced use of ICT in teaching and learning is discussed. In this presentation, we focus on initial teacher education (both class teachers and subject teachers of comprehensive school) which takes place at the research-based universities in Finland. Therefore an excellent context is available for ICT education, when student teachers carry out their pedagogical studies (60 ects) among which they all get some courses on ICT and its pedagogical use.

A lot of international research literature has been published of the ways how to improve and support teachers in their efforts to use ICT in the classrooms. The investigations indicate that the change takes place slowly, e.g. the present pedagogical routines are strong and the appearance of new ICT elements happens gradually. The main reasons for that are lack of equipment or software, insufficient personal technical abilities and poor pedagogical and technical support.Also psychological factors, e.g. attitudes, anxieties and fears towards computers, turn out quite oftento be as important prohibitive factors.The same trends and problems are present mainly also in teacher education. (Cox et al. 1999; Chifari et el. 1999.)

Finnish universities have received many annual cohorts of students who have computers at home, have studied ICT in the comprehensive school and have learned to use digital tools in various school subjects. University educators have taken it for granted that students want and can use computers.Besides that, many teacher educators share a stereotype of an extravert and bold student teacher who does not avoid meeting various kinds of challenges.

Nevertheless, both investigations and everyday observations indicate that students may feel themselves uncomfortable while working with computers, platforms and peripherals (Brosnan 1998). If a student teacher – later as a qualified teacher at school – do not trust on his/her tools, it may cause serious troubles to their pupils: how to courage them to use computers with open-mindedness and curiosity and convince that computers and nets are positive and important innovations?

1.2 Theoretical Underpinnings

There are good reasons to assume that if students do not like computers, feelthemselves unsure of their personal abilities to use the ICT and have perhaps bad experiences of its classroom use or computer courses, they may avoid the use of computers at the university both consciously and unconsciously. (Tseng et el. 2005; Weil & Rosen 1994.) It may even affect the learning results (Clariana & Wallace 2002). Various factors explaining the use of computers can be found from the research reports: gender, computer anxiety, technophobia, working satisfaction, ease of use, usefulness, attitudes, skills, personality etc. For example, previous investigations have shown a positive relation between self-efficacy and computer experience (Chifari et al. 2000). Some of those are discussed and analysed in this presentation.

Attitudes and beliefs are important factors which influence on student’s desire to use computers. According to the research results, main beliefs in computer context are perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Here ’perceived ease of use’ refers to the trust of one’s own abilities to use computers, and ’perceived usefulness’ can be defined as personal status value of computers and general usefulness of computers. (Albion 1999; Tuomivaara 2000.)

According to Bandura (1997, 3),“perceived self-efficacy refers to the beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce given attainments”, and such beliefs are the most central mechanism of personal agency. Bandura’s claims about the self-efficacy have been supported by research in variety of contexts, computers included. Albion (1999, 2) refers to many research reports when he describes, that perceived self-efficacy with respect to computers have been found to be an important factor in decisions about using them.Increased performance with computer related tasks is found to be significantly related to higher levels of computer-efficacy.

So a person who has high self-efficacy, thinks that s/he has enough abilities to accomplish any task. If a student teacher sees the use of computers easy, s/he trusts on her/himself, e.g. s/he has computer confidence or computer self-efficacy. A model of interrelations between computer confidence, attitudes and the use of computers is described in Figure 1.

External factorsInternal factorsBehaviour

FIGURE 1. A model of interrelations between the use of computers, computer attitudes, main beliefs on use of computers and external factors (Tuomivaara 2000, 223)

The use of computers is directly explained by attitudes and indirectly by beliefs which influence through attitudes. Those beliefs are computer confidence, status value of computer use and general usefulness of a computer. Computer confidence influences on attitudes also indirectly through perceived status value and general usefulness.

If a student, for example, sees computers as useful but s/he do not trust on his/her own abilities to use computers, a cognitive dissonance emerges. The dissonance is rectified either by changing one or the other belief or by focusing on some other issues to show that it isirrelevant for his/her self-concept. Cassidy and Eachus (2005) found that familiarisation with computer programs and previous experience were the strongest determinants to self-efficacy.

External factors influence through computer confidence. Learning confidence (self-efficacy) is an important component of self-directedness and means that a person trusts on him/herself as a learner. Bandura (1997) sees that one of the factors influencing self-efficacy is emotional orientation. Computer anxiety is one of the factors which may create computer confidence;’computer anxiety’ can be defined as concern or worry which arouses in an actual or intended interaction with computers. Psychologists do not classify active avoidance of computers as a fear or phobia but see it as parallel to situation-specific anxieties, as test anxiety or mathematics anxiety. (Cassidy & Eachus 2005.)

A person opposes the use of computers because s/he thinks that s/he will be put to shame, will look like stupid or will violate the equipment. These beliefs are related to their beliefs on their abilities to use computers. Users with lower computer anxiety assesstheir self-efficacy as higher and perform better with computers than those with higher computer anxiety. Generally speaking, the increase in anxiety decreases the self-efficacy, and so the low computer anxiety correlates with high computer confidence. Computer anxiety is connected with other beliefs as well but in all likelihood, it affects through computer confidence, because it is in very central position and because anxiety and efficacy are so closely connected with each other.

1.3 Research Problems

Based on the above-described theoretical guidelines, the main research problem was formulated to find out factors which explain the preferences of student teachers to study the use of ICT in education. The concrete context for the factors and their interrelations was a university course “Information Technology and Learning” (4 ects) which belongs to the pedagogical studies (60 ects) of student teachers. The focus was to understand the factors which may explain the selection of study mode between virtual and traditional exam: Are some types of the students going to avoid computer-based studies and exam when there is a traditional option of studying available?

2METHODS AND PROCEDURES

2.1 Some Background Information

In 1999 the Faculty of Education at the University of Joensuu decided to cut down costs. One consequence of that decision was to substitute an elementary ICT course “Information Technology and Learning” in teacher education with a formal book exam. This change influenced on 150 – 250 teacher students per year. Before long, it turned out that due to the students’ different levels of ICT knowledge, background and motivation, studying a subject that deals with strange and to some extend abstract concepts is a demanding task. The percentage of failed marks was sky high, varying from 45 % to even 75 % per exam.

In order to improve the students’ course success and to engage and encourage them in the use of ICT in education, a virtual learning environment was designed for the course in autumn 2002. The idea of the environment was to educate students in the use of computers while they were working with the course content. The learning environment consists of orientation and study materials, exercises and an online exam. The possibilities of WebCT environment (university's digital platform) – particularly additional web material and rehearsal quizzes – were applied as a tool.

Pedagogically, the aim of the web course was to support both individual studying on the time that is most suitable to the students and students’ self-directed learning of new concepts and contents. Constructive conception on learning assumes that knowledge can be transmitted and the instruction consists of experiences that facilitate knowledge construction (Jonassen 1999). Thus, one of our main problems was how to make constructive questions by using WebCT multiple-choice tests. Traditional multiple-choice questions often test only memory, not understanding or applying the knowledge. However, it is possible to make multiple-choice questions that require understanding and lead the students to think, write and rewrite (Bransford et al. 1999). In our environment the study material and exercises aim to teach and repeat the main items, while those in the exam aim to evaluate learning.

The year 2003, when this environment was introduced, was a period of transition when the students had a possibility to carry out the course in the web environment (later in the text ‘virtual’) or take the formal book exam (later in the text ‘traditional’).

2.2 Data and Methods

The data for this study was collected at the University of Joensuu, Finland, among the teacher students from five faculties who enrolled the course "Information Technology and Learning" in autumn 2003. Altogether 110 students decided to participate in a traditional book exam and 58 chose an opportunity of a virtual course in WebCT environment (university's digital platform) when trying carry out the course. All the students filled in a questionnaire which measured not only their computer anxiety and self-efficacy (40 items in 5-point scale) but also availability of equipment and perceived competence in using computers.

The information of the questionnaire was reduced to dimensions (principal components) that described students' computer anxiety, computer self-efficacy and confidence in computers in education, for example. The differences in dimensions between genders and study modes (virtual vs. traditional) were analysed by using t-test. Differences in dimensions between faculties was analysed by using ANOVA-models. The final model predicting the students' selection between the traditional and the virtual course was carried out by using logistic regression.

The research design for this study was planned by Rautopuro and Atjonen whose students Puurtinen and Pyykkonen designed the questionnaire and collected and analysed the data according to the main guidelines introduced by the senior scholars. The students reported the main results as their Master’s thesis in Education. The results indicated the need for more sophisticated analyses which was done for this conference presentation.

3RESULTS

The course "Information Technology and Learning" is a part of teacher students’ pedagogical studies and most of the students taking the course came from the Faculty of Education (45.8 %) and Faculty of Humanities (29.2 %). Approximately two-thirds (68.5 %) of the students were female.

In general, the students’ basic skills in ICT were on a quite high level. Over 95 % of the students reported that they master well a use almost daily text processors, email and web browser. There were no statistically significant differences in the basic skills in ICT between genders, faculties or the students in different study modes.

On the other hand, there was much more variation in advanced skills of ICT (image processing, multimedia programs and data bases, for example). The percentage of the students who felt familiar with certain advanced applications of ICT varied from 1.5 % to 20 %. There were statistically significant differences (p < 0.01) in the advanced use of ICT between genders, faculties and the students selecting different study mode (see Cassidy & Eachus 2005): Male students and students who had selected the virtual course had better advanced skills. The students from the major faculties (Education and Humanities) reported lower advanced skills that the student from other faculties (mainly the Faculty of Science).

The information of the long questionnaire was reduced to six principal components (oblim rotation) explaining nearly 60 % of total variation of the original variables. The components were named as follows:

PC I:computer anxiety

-I don’t feel at home in an exam measuring computer skills

-Learning new computer programs is not easy for me

-I can solve hardly any problems that I meet with computers

-I don’t’ enjoy working with computers

-I’m unsure about my skills to use computers

PC II: general usefulness of computers

-Working with computers is easy for me

-Computers make learning more interesting

-Computers save a lot of time

-Computers make me more effective

-Computer software make learning easier

PC III: computer resistance

-I would be much happier without computers

-If possible, I don’t use computers

-It would be good idea that would not have to learn the use of computers

-Working with computers is frustrating

PC IV: receptivity of guidance

-I’m delighted to ask help with my computer problems

-I’m happy to get feedback from my computer skills

PC V: ICT learning insecurity

-When I use computers I can’t concentrate on the task

-When I work with computers they make something I can’t understand

-It’s difficult to make computers what want them to do

-I can’t imagine learning new computer skills without instruction

PC VI: computer self-efficacy

-Computers are not too difficult for me

-I don’t have problems with computer programs

-I’m not afraid of violating the computer of the software

-I’m not concerned with any problems when working with computer

-In a computer classroom I have a feeling that I now at least the same than the others or even more

Since oblim rotation was applied, the dimensions are allowed to correlate with each other. In practice, the correlations were not very high despite of their statistical significance. The strongest association was found between the dimensions ’general usefulness of computers’ and ’computer resistance’(r = -0.367) where the latter component can be defined as a part of ’computer attitude’ in Tuomivaara’s (2000) conceptual model (Figure 1).