Students’ motivation to learning with Information Technology in statistics classroom

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2016

Keywords

Sociocultural theory, Social interaction, Statistical thinking, Statistical computing laboratory

DOI

10.1007/978-3-319-17727-4_57-1

Abstract

Information technology has an educational role in organizing the learning environment to promote social interaction among students as well as between students and a teacher. Although numerous research studies have reported how successfully IT plays this role, it is time to take a deeper look at the factors motivating students to learn with IT. As such, the focus of this study is what drives student learning, how to engage students with learning, and how to maintain their interest in learning within the environment of a statistical computing laboratory. Students in the laboratory were divided into small groups in order to increase their opportunities for peer learning and collaboration and to enable their teacher to monitor learning progress more efficiently and offer directives when necessary. Each group of students was assigned laboratory exercises demanding the analysis, design or implementation of the solutions but they had learning autonomy in what to do and how to do it. To explore what and how motivates the autonomous students to learn, a questionnaire-based survey was conducted to solicit students’ feedback about how they perceived the learning activities taking place in the laboratory with respect to the educational use of IT when learning alone; social processes played roles in construction and co-construction of knowledge; and teacher’s scaffolding assisted student learning. After analyzing the survey data, it was found that the concern for positive perceptions of learning with IT is a motivational factor linking with productive social interactions and rich collaboration with their learning partners in the laboratory.

Source Publication

Learning, Design and Technology: An International Compendium of Theory, Research, Policy - Technology Influencing Educational Futures

ISBN

9783319177274

First Page

1

Last Page

18

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