ascilite2015

more learning features of Wiki to comment, share resources and tools for their projects. This could
also be due to the university’s campus wide active promotion for technology-enabled pedagogy for
teaching and learning. All these could have resulted in students from the later cohorts in becoming
more adventurous in exploring new web-based tools and web-based resources in designing their
projects in the subsequent courses.
Correlation analysis was conducted across types of activities (refer to Table 2). The frequency of
“created” is positive correlated with “attached” (r = .35, p < .01) and “edited” (r = .79, p < .01); the
frequency of “attached” is positive correlated with “edited” (r = .47, p < .01), “commented” (r = .70, p <
.01) “deleted” (r = .34, p < .01), and “updated” (r = .26, p < .05); the frequency of “edited” is positive
correlated with “commented” (r = .39, p < .01); and the frequency of “commented” is positive
correlated with “deleted” (r = .26, p < .05). The activity, “recovered” was not included in the correlation
analysis due to its low frequency.
Table 2: Correlation across different types of activities
Created Attached Edited Commented Deleted Updated
Created 1 .354** .790** .209 -.001 -.020
Attached 1 .469** .698** .343** .258**
Edited 1 .385** .157 .083
Commented 1 .263* .060
Deleted 1 .133
Updated 1
*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Conclusion
This paper has shown that through using an inquiry-based approach towards interpreting metadata
stored in Google Sites, instructors can analyse student online activity so as to better improve their
online pedagogy. The observed classroom data has revealed students’ behaviours in the online
learning environment. It has shown that students in this study engaged most frequently in
commenting and editing, but engaged least frequently in updating and recovering. Moreover, the
student profile, the presence of school breaks, and the attitude towards online learning as reflected in
the metadata do affect students’ response towards online learning. Students' participation in online
platforms is not just important to the learners, but to the instructors as well. Hence, it is important that
instructors take advantage of the activities that students engage in most frequently, as well as the
presence of school breaks, so as to improve their students’ learning outcome. However, instructors
should be cautioned against the use of simplistic analyses and comparisons derived from the
metadata because the analysis has not taken into account the many underlying characteristics, such
as profile of learners, socio-economic status or family background, which may explain the
comparative performance of the students in terms of the grades obtained at the end of the
module(Renshaw et al., 2013). In addition, careful attention and thoughtfulness should be exercised
by instructors in scaffolding learners’ learning roadmaps through an understanding of their
characteristics, the availability of curriculum time (online or blended) and the design of interesting
student-centred learning activities, are necessary for their pedagogy to be effective in wikis(Author).
References
Author. Exploring Teachers' Perceptions of Wikis for Learning Classroom Uses. Australian Journal of
Teacher Education , 39 (2).
Fobes, C., & Kaufman, P. (2008). Critical Pedagogy in the Sociology Classroom: Challenges and
Concerns. Teaching Sociology , 36 (1), 26-33.
Gruba, P., & Hinkleman, D. (2012). Blending Technologies in second language classrooms. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Mayadas, A. F., Bourne, J., & Bacsich, P. (2009). Online Education Today. Science Magazine , 323
(5910), 85-89.
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