Volume Two - Academic Conferences

Eleni Rossiou and Erasmia Papadopoulou
Figure 8: Students’ opinion on degree of importance of participating from home
Students’ opinions related to the time available for discussion and the implementation of collaborative
activities during the use of Google applications, i.e. Google Groups and shared Google Docs
accordingly, resulted in the need for more time for discussion and interaction with their classmates. In
detail, students stated that there was enough (39,58%) or too little (35,42%) time for discussion but
more than 50% of the students believe that there was sufficient time for collaborative activities (Figure
9). Later on, it was clarified in the discussion that their expectation is to be given the opportunity to
exchange opinions not only asynchronously
but synchronously, as well. This result was not expected
since we all know that students meet live in the traditional classroom, so we need to investigate this
more.
Figure 9: Students’ opinions about the evaluation of educational methodology as it concerns the time
sufficiency for discussion and collaborative activities
When it comes to the degree of difficulty of access to web-based environments
of activities and
configuration of their settings, as expected, students did not have any specific difficulty as they feel
comfortable in these types of environments (Figure 10). The ease of access was also confirmed from
the interviews and the teacher’s observation sheet.
Furthermore, as students explained in the interviews, although they did not know of the existence of
Google Groups and the management of shared Google Docs, they found it extremely interesting to
have the opportunity of collaborating in such a manner. Because of having this opportunity, they can
overcome different obstacles that they face when they have group activities also in the context of
other lessons.
5. Discussion-conclusions
If one makes a general review of the main results of the current research, the main hypothesis that
‘the blended learning as a complementary teaching and learning tool is effective in performance and
students’ positive attitude towards the use of collaborative web-based tools as Google applications,
during education as wel’ is confirmedl. Many researchers agree that traditional learning models in
distance learning processes with the use of ICT are not examples of success stories, but on the other
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