Impacts and preferences study for e-HO as a holistic learning environment complementary to e-Learning

Computers & Education 56 (2011) 747–759

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Impacts and preferences study for e-HO as a holistic learning environment complementary to e-Learning Ching-Yieh Lee a, *, Peter Jen Der Pan a, Ching-Jung Liao b a b

Center for General Education, Chung Yuan Christian University. 200, Chung Pei Rd., Chung Li, Taiwan 32023, Taiwan, ROC Department of Information Management, Chung Yuan Christian University. Chung Li, Taiwan 32023, Taiwan, ROC

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 13 October 2009 Received in revised form 20 October 2010 Accepted 21 October 2010

We present in this study the significance and impacts of an innovative e-HO as a holistic and horizontal platform complementary to e-Learning to help realize transdisciplinary learning and foster integration of knowledge in higher education. A comprehensive investigation of a survey conducted among 647 university students for e-HO is presented with detailed studies on students’ preferences toward e-HO with respect to various demographic variables including gender, access frequency, grade level, discipline and access route concerning the five scales extracted in this particular survey. No significant gender difference surfaced, whereas access frequency turned out to be the most influential and decisive variable that has resulted in significant differences on all the scales involved, especially the characteristic ‘Leisure climate’. Further significant differences appeared on different scales with distinct natures for different demographic variables other than gender and access frequency, indicating the multidimensional characteristics of the whole endeavor and that care must be taken whenever a learning environment like this is constructed in higher education. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Interactive learning environments Interdisciplinary projects Media in education Pedagogical issues Teaching/learning strategies

1. Introduction The Internet has emerged as an important tool for teaching and learning for more than a couple of decades (e.g., Cheung & Huang, 2005; Desai, Hart, & Richards, 2008; Fraser, 1999). However, the state of the art has generally focused upon a teaching platform, e-Learning, wherein hundreds of different courses have been packed and delivered in a longitudinal way without much mutual correlations and crossovers. Though it has resulted in tremendous impacts upon modern pedagogy with various proposals and further improvements still going on for its remedy and better performance (DiRamio & Wolverton, 2006; Keller, 2008; McPherson & Nunes, 2008; Sims, 2008; Wahlstedt, Pekkola, & Niemelä, 2008), little has been attempted and studied, however, concerning the Internet’s potential and impacts for bringing in a more integrative and holistic view of knowledge as devastatingly needed for a fragmented world like this (e.g., Forbes, 2003; Miller, 1999; Scott, 2002). Indeed, the fragmentation and incoherence of knowledge inherent in both the education system and beyond has been a serious problem in Taiwan (Lin, 2001; Pan, Pan, Lee, & Chang, 2010; Ting, Pan, & Yang, 2008). The general perception or attitude toward learning and education overall has been so practical and implemental in this particular society that two major problems have afflicted severely the whole education system. Firstly, specialty training for a living has been over emphasized. For example, a major part of university students have been trained to be technical experts but end up instead as uneducated experts who are alienated from the liberal arts and humanities as emphatically put it by some researchers (Lin, 2001; Pan et al., 2010). It is evidently true also vice versa. Secondly, superficial assessments, especially those underlying so many kinds of tests and examinations inherent in the educational process have drawn students’ attention away from learning efficacy itself to mere grades (Pan et al., 2010). As a result, most students have engaged themselves in the memorization of knowledge in bits and pieces to prepare for numerous tests and examinations in almost the whole hierarchy of the education system. Especially, learning activities in areas like art and music have often been bypassed in many middle schools while the so-called mainstream curricula are being over emphasized and intensified in most unbalanced ways. Major portions of the middle school students have attended extension classes even for more teachings and exercises in various subjects as such dictated by major entrance examinations like the

* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ886 3 265 6872; fax: þ886 3 265 6899. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C.-Y. Lee), [email protected] (P.J. Der Pan), [email protected] (C.-J. Liao). 0360-1315/$ – see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2010.10.017

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National Subject–Competency Test (NSCT) for high school students before they enter colleges or universities. In other words, the educational environment is highly test-driven and hinders often the practices of a variety of excellent pedagogical strategies like project-based learning (PBL) as pointed out recently by Chang and Lee (2010). For most high school students, they study hard just to get into some universities anticipated; while for most university students, undergraduate or graduate alike, they study hard just to get some jobs mediocre. Though a phenomenon like this has been more or less universal, it is particularly prevailing in Taiwan and evidently is not very healthy both for the society as a whole and the individuals therein. Therefore, the motivation for study and the attitude toward learning overall have been distorted severely to mere pragmatic and implemental purposes almost exclusively in this society. For many college students, learning has become a passive duty dry and boring often instead of a process of exploration with stimulation, illumination, and even fascination as many times it could bring about in probing studies. As the basic motivation for learning has been seriously defied, the ground for the integration of knowledge and holistic education has thus been undermined in a fundamental way. The cost for this has been tremendous. Failings in the capability of integration and the appreciation of multiple viewpoints in addition to lacking in the global perspective have driven Taiwan into a highly divisive society and it has thus suffered a sluggish overall growth as a nation over the past couple of decades despite its technological impetus alone has managed to maintain certain degree of competency until this day. The situation has been worsening in recent years when the massification of higher education started to emerge in this society (Wang, 2003) as had happened in others (e.g., Mayhew, Deer, & Dua, 2004). Generally speaking, mass university students today have been bred up intensively by the digit and Internet subculture characterized by speed, freedom and entertainment. However, traditional teaching-based pedagogies, which have basically inherited the former elite format, even now realized in e-Learning usually neglect their feeling preferences or favored perceptions although elements like these have been studied and reported to be crucial while preparing for online studies among this young generation (e.g., Papastergiou & Solomonidou, 2005; Tsai, 2007, 2008). How to seek an outlet for these issues in this characteristic Information Age has become a great challenge to higher education in Taiwan. In response to this particular need for the integration of knowledge and the challenges emerged in mass higher education (Daniel, 1993; Mayhew et al., 2004; Scott, 2002; Wang, 2003), a constructivist holistic learning environment e-HO has been proposed and constructed in Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU), as suitable for this characteristic mass young generation depicted as “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001), to connect and integrate in a horizontal way the diverse areas of general education in a complementary way to the traditional e-Learning, especially in the light of a recent research finding that much more students viewed web-based learning as pursuing real understanding and seeing in a new way than those for learning in general (Tsai, 2009). While educators have supposed that students will integrate automatically what they learned from different courses, lab studies indicated that this is hardly the case though (Barnett & Ceci, 2002; De Corte, 2003). Earlier researchers also observed that spontaneous knowledge integration does not happen in general (Songer & Linn, 1991). It often resulted in fragmented or compartmentalized knowledge (Bagno & Eylon, 1997; Lewis, 1991; Linn & Hsi, 2000). While helping students develop systems-thinking skills through a class utilizing some specific tools like systems modeling to enhance their integrative capability has derived some encouraging and positive results (Hung, 2008), we seek here to solve the problem via a broader and more systematic approach, namely, the construction of a holistic and horizontal environment for the whole general curriculum, to facilitate beyond any specific skills the atmosphere for connections and integrations of knowledge in the domain of the present Internet subculture empowered by Web 2.0 technologies (e.g., Churchill, 2009). Both approaches are evidently necessary and suitable accordingly for the whole endeavor. As suggested by Benander and Lightner (2005), to effectively solve the problem of fragmentation and incoherence in general education, individual courses should be regarded as pieces of a “larger experience” for students. Though the curriculur structure, as the whole skeleton with each individual course as a particular piece of bone, may be perfecting along the way, muscles and sinews are not yet ready developed to facilitate the final move for a lively general education. We would like to call for attention that this “larger experience”, wherein to provide the due functions of muscles and sinews, could not be expected by nature in the conventional curricular structure as the mere skeleton itself. Some new approach toward this end beyond the curricular efforts is evidently inevitable. Nonetheless, little has been cultivated and reported along this particular direction. In the present study, we shall first describe briefly the meaning and significance of e-HO as a proper platform and example to fulfill this particular need and then report on the detailed results of a particular survey conducted among university students concerning the significance and impacts of this holistic learning environment. Web e-HO was started in 2005 as a specific part of “The Project of Teaching and Learning Excellence” supported by The Education Ministry of Taiwan. It has been filled with various works, articles, VODs (Videos on Demand) and worldwide links in full spectrum of general education including music, fine arts, science, literature, emotion management, character building and personal relationship etc., for the purpose of its ‘holistic’ significance as well as its ‘horizontal’ connections among different disciplines, in contrast to e-Learning wherein many parallel courses developed in their own longitudinal way, hardly related and fragmented to one another, are packed and delivered individually with various levels of interface that are difficult to crossover. Since e-HO has been initiated as an innovative tool, some detailed explanation of this new environment may be necessary and will be described in the following. Indeed, e-Learning has been very significant and convenient in the communication of teaching materials and information in a given course. It has been such a paradigm shift in education and brought tremendous impacts upon teaching and learning overall (Desai et al., 2008). The whole collection of all the courses in e-Learning could be perceived as a bundle of longitudinal fibers developing and growing with specialties and depths of their own each. Nonetheless, possible relationships or connections among them are not concerned or guided because each instructor of any individual course cultivates essentially only on his or her own territory of specific discipline. The complementary role of e-HO is to provide and facilitate for the possible connections or crossovers among these longitudinal course fibers under the climate of contemporary Internet subculture which dominates and is favored by most university students today. We emphasize that e-Learning is by itself very significant and important in modern pedagogy as mentioned earlier. The innovative new platform e-HO is by no means to replace the unique role of e-Learning or to be an alternative to it, but to play its complementary role in providing possible horizontal connections or bridges for the many longitudinal course fibers in e-Learning to help weave a more complete knowledge network for general education. For example, musical resources and contests of musical composition as such held in e-HO are not meant to take the place of any of the musical classes delivered in e-Learning, but to accommodate handy and easy access for music overall and to inspire students’ interest in related areas. They serve as a guidance or connection for interested students, most of them are not music majors of course, to take some related classes in general curricula for more comprehensive and intensive studies. The meaning of e-HO as a complementary platform to e-Learning is quite clear as illustrated.

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To fulfill this particular purpose, the interfaces in e-HO are designated as friendly as possible and the crossovers from one domain to the others are easy. The contents or activities in all the spectrum of general education are prepared in interesting or enjoyable ways possible not only to help integrate over diverse areas of knowledge but also to meet the favored preferences of the mass university students while doing so. This later consideration has seldom been concerned in e-Learning and it has been studied and reported recently to be very important while preparing for online studies among this young generation (e.g., Tsai, 2007, 2008) as shall be elaborated in our detailed investigations. As it has turned out, to lubricate is also very important when we are trying to communicate just as a sense of humor is to a lecture. This is particularly true for the mass university students because their motivation for and attitude toward learning are quite different from those of the elite in the past. Therefore, to integrate knowledge in students’ preferred atmospheres has been one of the major priorities in cultivating this particular learning environment. Following the other analogy mentioned earlier, another way to visualize the meaning of e-HO and its relationship to e-Learning could be drawn from the physiological make up of a human body. It is to provide the due functions of muscles and sinews (connections and coordinations) with proper lubrication (enjoyment and favor) for e-Learning as the whole skeleton and structure itself with each individual course as a particular piece of bone to facilitate the final move for a lively general education. Evidently, e-Learning as the whole skeleton and structure is of vital importance in the first place, nonetheless, e-HO as a platform providing the due functions of muscles and sinews with lubrication is indispensable either. However, as could be clearly seen again, e-HO is by no means to replace the unique role of e-Learning or to be an alternative to it just like muscles and sinews are not to replace the role of the whole skeleton. To achieve our goals for integration and connection with lubrication, the environment was initiated by the university and constructed with continuing supply and maintenance by faculty with transdisciplinary experiences and enthusiasm as well in the incorporation of the atmospheres inherent in contemporary Internet subculture that has influenced and been favored by mass university students today. In comparison with the general practices in traditional e-Learning, the new trends as reflected in this subculture embrace both more extensively and more intensively interactive mechanisms of diverse kinds, User Generated Contents (UGC) of all varieties and enjoyable games with true educational dimensions as well. Therefore, for pedagogical efficacy, sharing and interactive mechanisms of various sorts have been set up as wide open as possible in e-HO accordingly. While the moderator does have provided resources of many kinds in all possible facets of general education, students could share their own short stories, poems, humorous pieces, art works, photos, composed music and comments etc. in various sharing sections in e-HO. Besides, they could also share many excellent or interesting links. As a result, many worldwide resources of UGC good for encouragement, emotion management, art appreciation and science education etc. have become available and are easy for excess as well to students. Sharing mechanisms like these have been very significant and helpful in collecting excellent and meaningful learning resources for general education though some systematic expositions with Instructor Delivered Materials (IDM) are still necessary and important in the general curriculum. However, this is in agreement with and a realization of the emerging trend that the traditional teaching practice wherein knowledge is delivered from the instructor to the students is being replaced by learning (e.g., Scott, 2002) or learner-centered constructivist activities in which the guiding, supporting and interacting are emphasized to help students construct their own worldview or perceptions through the inspirations or enlightenments sprung up in their mind while lingering in or relating to the particular environment prepared. These processes cherish to have students grow as inner-illuminated human beings instead of outer-stuffed animals. As e-HO has been developing and evolving continuously along the way, in order to keep it as flexible as possible we shall define e-HO through several guiding principles that are necessary in keeping up with its original purposes without being limited or confined to its present framework or patterns of moderation as such. In summary, e-HO is a constructivist learning environment:     

with holistic and horizontal significance complementary to e-Learning; in the contemporary Internet subculture suitable for mass university students today; under the climate of leisure, enjoyment and interaction favored by this young generation; constructed and moderated by faculty meanwhile supported and contributed by all the students; and characterized by online activities in diverse transdisciplinary settings and possibilities.

In order that the meaning and significance of e-HO might be better grasped from a fuller perspective we present in Fig.1 the panorama or the scheme of e-HO as a horizontal and holistic learning environment and then proceed to illustrate a little bit concerning these dimensions in what follows. As a constructivist learning environment, e-HO is to serve as a platform for this “larger experience” mentioned above wherein students could stay and connect in some organic way the contents from different courses in general education. The connections many times are empowered and intensified through various intriguing transdisciplinary activities held in the environment. For example, we had some digitart contest relating particularly Astronomy to Visual Art. When they watched through the links to NASA and HubbleSite thousands of magnificent pictures of the cosmos, many students managed to sigh to themselves: “The best museum yet to explore is just above our heads, deep high in the sky!” To finish some artwork connected to the marvelous and spectacular universe has been such an experience never attempted or thought of before for many students. It should be emphasized as well that a holistic environment like e-HO with transdisciplinary atmosphere not only fosters, on the one hand, sound holistic development in a student but also enlarges, on the other, his or her dimension of creativity as part of the package in holism. Transdisciplinary linkages of information many times trigger explosive and creative energy in the mind as reported by Csikszentmihalyi (1997), who, after having studied 91 influential people of the twentieth century including a few Nobel Prize Laureates, concluded that most of the creative breakthroughs came from the linkages of information that were regarded in general as unrelated. They received more inspirations from other domains than their colleagues, especially very often from those of the perceptual. The crossover of different domains has been one of the most important characteristics of these outstanding people (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997). It should be stressed again that such kind of transdisciplinary activities or linkages of information usually do not occur in most individual courses in e-Learning except few interdisciplinary ones which are relatively limited both in scope and participation in general. Significant part also came from some music contests on e-HO where students from all discipline backgrounds uploaded many pieces of music composed by themselves to their own surprises for the first time in their lives, though most of them knew nothing about the theory of composition as such. Some link with free downloadable resources for music composition and editing was provided to facilitate students for

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C.-Y. Lee et al. / Computers & Education 56 (2011) 747–759 Faculty Constructed Frame Supplied and moderated by faculty With intriguing transdisciplinary activities intertwined

Performing Arts

Visual Arts

Literature

Science

Life

and

and

Humanities

character

Emotion

Environment Relationships

management

and

……

Health

Student Generated Contents Supported and contributed by all the students Under the atmosphere of contemporary Internet subculture

Fig. 1. The scheme of e-HO as a horizontal and holistic learning environment.

such an exciting experience. A simple melody composed first time by an apprentice has often inspired others beyond he or she could imagine. Many times the impacts came about in a nonlinear way or beyond rational linkages conceivable. A web activity like this has also triggered many enlightening reflections and discussions and brought about inner awakenings of various degrees to students. A campuswide online musical activity like this could only be made possible through a common and horizontal platform like e-HO, whereas any individual music course in e-Learning could not have easily achieved this for all the students on campus. Again, we see this ‘holistic’ and ‘horizontal’ significance of e-HO that could not be brought about naturally by e-Learning. In addition, besides all the contents and activities as mentioned above, the horizontal and holistic dimensions of e-HO are further enhanced by a particular VOD system embedded in. It consists of lively interviews or documentaries of more than 140 people who could very well be ascribed as various life paradigms in diverse discipline backgrounds including scientists, engineers, architects, entrepreneurs, writers, statesmen, medical doctors, artists and so forth. They can serve as excellent motivators for students toward a meaningful and fulfilling life. With the recommendations or requirements by many instructors, thousands of hits could be counted each academic year with hundreds of feedbacks and reflections uploaded by students. See how tremendous it could bring about in students’ lives that no teaching or lecturing alone could have achieved. Through the examples depicted above, we could readily get a glimpse of the role of e-HO in providing the due functions of muscles and sinews for e-Learning as the whole skeleton itself to facilitate the final move for a lively general education. Though e-Learning as the whole skeleton is both vital and crucial, the role of e-HO as muscles and sinews to connect each individual course as a piece of bone is also necessary for an integrative and wholesome body of education system. We see in e-HO this important complementary significance to e-Learning. Having illustrated briefly the overall meaning and significance of a holistic and horizontal learning environment like e-HO, we shall now turn our attention to the outcome of a particular survey conducted among university students in CYCU concerning the impacts of e-HO to test and investigate in a concrete way the efficacy of the whole endeavor. We shall present first the overall satisfaction concerning the emerging scales after factor analysis and then look at students’ preferences toward e-HO surfaced in the various demographic variables involved, including all the differences in gender, access frequency, grade level, discipline and access route to detect the shortcomings inherent in e-HO and help set about the right direction for future development and improvement. 2. Methodology The participants of this survey consisted of 647 university students in CYCU, with 309 males (48%) and 338 females (52%), coming from all diversities of disciplinary fields of the university including Colleges of Science, Engineering, Electric Engineering and Computer Science (EE&CS), Business, Law, Humanities and Education (H&E), and Design. When sorted in terms of science-related and humanities-related categories, a little bit more than half the participants (57%) came from the former while the rest (43%) came from the later. The majority of them are undergraduates (94%) and only a few are graduates (6%). Though e-HO has been initiated for undergraduate students in the beginning, quite many graduate students have surprisingly been attracted to it as well because the particular environment is open to everyone on campus. Nonetheless, their automatic accesses to e-HO and involvements in the survey could possibly help us find out also what kind of improvement or enhancement is needed one step further in the future development of this particular environment.

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As the access to e-HO has not been required by the general curriculum overall, the access frequency for each student involved varies. About 45% of the students involved in the survey were required by their instructors to access e-HO on weekly bases as parts of their homework assignments and 55% of them accessed the environment freely through other routes like university homepage or campus DM. Typical homework assignments may include article readings, art or music appreciations, activity involvements and sharings of various kinds etc. with reflections, feedbacks or related works reported back. Besides, all the contributions from any student, whether in words, music or images, have been collected in his or her e-HO-portfolio which could be presented to the instructors or checked up in their demands. In this study, three research questions concerning the basic roles of e-HO have to be answered to see how efficient it has been after it has moved along out of its infant stage. They are outlined in the following: 1. Are the content and resources provided adequate or abundant enough in fostering holism as well as the capability of integration for a typical university student? 2. Are the holistic and horizontal dimensions brought about in some inspirational ways? 3. How do students like it or do they like to visit after class? In other words, is it really suitable at all for the mass university students today? For these aims, the survey was presented with bipolar agree/disagree statements in a 5-point Likert mode for totally 14 items concerning Web e-HO as a holistic learning environment for general education overall. A score of 5 was assigned to the response of “strongly agree”, whereas 1 to that of “strongly disagree”. We shall present first in the following outcomes of the factor analysis for the survey and then give the average scores on all the resultant scales extracted. After that we shall move into more comprehensive studies concerning students’ attitudes and preferences toward e-HO via the difference analyses for all the demographic variables involved.

3. Results 3.1. Factor analysis After factor analysis, five orthogonal factors (scales) were extracted through principle component analysis with varimax rotation. The result is schematically shown in Table 1. All the items of the questionnaire in detailed description are listed instead in the Appendix. The significances of all the scales are presented in the following: 1 ‘Holistic resources’: measuring perceptions of the extent students regard e-HO as adequate in content and resources for the holistic development of a person. 2 ‘Feeling preferences’: measuring perceptions of the extent students feel positively toward e-HO. 3 ‘Leisure climate’: measuring perceptions of the extent students consider e-HO a good leisure environment. 4 ‘Holistic inspiration’: measuring perceptions of the extent students consider e-HO as inspirational and helpful for holistic education. 5 ‘User friendliness’: measuring perceptions of the extent students feel e-HO user-friendly. Though only one item appeared in this particular scale, it turned out quite significant as well when its loading was concerned. It came out as high as 0.871 for the single item mentioned. So we have not dropped it. The five factors account for 79.8% of total variance explained with overall Cronbach-a ¼ 0.95. Students’ average scores for all the scales relevant are outlined and summarized in Table 2 with percentage of variance explained and Cronbach-a for each attached. The outcome of the statistical analysis concerning the survey turned out quite positive reflecting that the significance of e-HO as a holistic learning environment and horizontal connection for different discipline fields has been well recognized and appreciated. From the results we could readily see that the role of e-HO is evidently very unique also in this characteristic Internet era for this generation of “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001) to foster holism and integration of knowledge in a fragmented world like this. One of the guiding principles in

Table 1 Factor analysis of the e-HO survey. Item Factor 1: Holistic resources (HR, a ¼ 0.91) HR1- university resources HR2- worldwide resources HR3- modern significance HR4- lifelong learning HR5- abundant content Factor 2: Feeling preferences (FP, a ¼ 0.88) FP1- activity enjoyment FP2- delightful learning FP3- overall satisfaction FP4- recommending zeal Factor 3: Leisure climate (LC, a ¼ 0.78) LC1- creative playground LC2- leisure environment Factor 4: Holistic Inspiration (HI, a ¼ 0.78) HI1- holism promotion HI2- inspirational atmosphere Factor 5: User friendliness (UF, a ¼ 1.0) UF1- friendly interfaces

Factor 1

Factor 2

Factor 3

Factor 4

Factor 5

0.782 0.743 0.731 0.725 0.504 0.730 0.662 0.617 0.585 0.869 0.707 0.721 0.706 0.871

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Table 2 Average scores on the five scales extracted out of the e-HO survey. Scale

Mean

SD

Percentage of variance explained

Cronbach-a

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic Inspiration User friendliness

4.07 4.01 3.60 4.05 3.83

0.71 0.73 0.84 0.70 0.77

25.3% 17.9% 13.4% 12.5% 10.7%

0.91 0.88 0.78 0.78 1.00

constructing e-HO is that we should teach them where they are as “digital natives”. Though the particular term may have seemed over advocated to some researchers and slipped into a matter of debate (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008), suffice to say that this young generation do possess certain temperament inherent in modern Internet subculture that is very distinct from those of previous generations even if they are not to be classified as utter aliens. The characteristics of this particular generation including their like to share and interact online, to have fun and entertainment, to create and imagine, to be inspired etc., nonetheless, have not been carefully taken into account in general in traditional e-Learning (Fraser, 1999; Hedberg, 2006; Peng, Tsai, & Wu, 2006). Having intentionally incorporated some elements in modern Internet subculture, we still have an urgent need to further study students’ actual preferences toward this platform surfaced in the differences of various demographic variables like gender, access frequency and discipline etc., so that due improvements could be carried out to further enhance the efficacy of this particular web. We report in the following the results of the difference analyses on all the demographic variables inherent in this particular survey through Analyses of Variance (one-way ANOVA essentially). 3.2. Gender differences Gender differences in students’ attitudes and preferences toward Web-based learning have been a major concern since the Internet emerged as a powerful and useful learning environment (Bunderson & Christensen, 1995; Reinen & Plomp, 1997). Significant differences have been reported along the way (Durndell, Haag, & Laithwaite, 2000; Jackson, Ervin, Gardner, & Schmitt, 2001; Shashaani & Khalili, 2001; Sussman & Tyson, 2000). However, some researches tended to indicate that gender differences might not be as significant as they were first considered. In other words, the gap between men and women, especially as far as their potentials and capabilities are concerned, might be superficial by and large though there might indeed exist different tendencies or preferences between males and females toward the Internet or Web-based learning. For example, it was suggested that the particular gap might not be really gender originated but the result of socioeconomic and other factors (Bimber, 2000). Indeed, in subsequent studies by various groups, more results have been reported that gender differences in the access of the Internet or Web-based learning have been diminishing, narrowing or even vanishing (Chen & Tsai, 2007; Hanauer, Dibble, Fortin, & Col, 2004; Ono & Zavodny, 2003; Papastergiou & Solomonidou, 2005; Tsai & Lin, 2004). This could be understood in view of the rapid growth of the Internet popularity. Females worldwide are getting more or equal opportunities in socioeconomic and educational domains. Superficial gender differences have diminished or started to dissolve while those relating to particular preferences with true gender origins may still remain and should be respected like that related to somehow heavily flavored online games (Wang & Wang, 2008). It would be of vital importance to see how gender differences might surface in our present study concerning e-HO in order that proper response could be set forth to facilitate its better performance. After applying ANOVA, we found no significant gender difference surfaced for all the scales inherent in e-HO as shown from the results in Table 3, wherein all the p values involved are far beyond 0.05. From the mean scores of both genders for the purpose driven scales of ‘Holistic resources’, ‘Holistic inspiration’ and ‘Feeling preferences’, we see firstly that the fundamental aims of the web as a holistic and horizontal learning environment complementary to e-Learning are well recognized, received and, in addition, appreciated of its inspirational temperament and enjoyable atmosphere as well to both genders involved in the survey. Secondly, though the mean scores of those auxiliary scales like ‘Leisure climate’ and ‘User friendliness’ are relatively lower than the previous ones, both genders demonstrated their fair support and appreciation to this web as a learning platform basically instead of a recreation-oriented environment. Of course, it by no means that further upgradings for these scales are unimportant or irrelevant as shall be elaborated later. However, our result with no significant gender difference is evidently in agreement with this emerging trend mentioned above. 3.3. Access frequency differences Access frequency to any particular website in general usually relates to a desire for rewards connected with Internet use (Fusilier, Durlabhji, Cucchi, & Collins, 2005) and personal purposes or gender preferences (Wasserman & Richmond-Abbott, 2005). Nonetheless,

Table 3 The comparison of mean scores between genders for the e-HO survey and results of ANOVA. Male

Female

Scale

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic inspiration User friendliness

4.05 3.98 3.62 4.03 3.84

0.70 0.71 0.82 0.73 0.82

4.09 4.04 3.59 4.07 3.83

0.54 0.56 0.71 0.54 0.74

0.904 1.217 0.214 0.688 0.068

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Table 4 The comparison of mean scores among different access frequencies and results of ANOVA. (once per)

1–3 days

4–7 days

1–2 wks

3–4 wks

1 month[

Scale

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic inspiration User friendliness

4.09 4.10 3.81 4.12 3.91

0.71 0.71 0.82 0.66 0.83

4.23 4.13 3.76 4.19 3.97

0.60 0.60 0.69 0.54 0.70

4.01 3.92 3.54 4.01 3.78

0.53 0.62 0.75 0.63 0.77

3.97 3.99 3.34 4.01 3.79

0.36 0.33 0.66 0.44 0.64

3.91 3.82 3.27 3.83 3.60

0.66 0.63 0.70 0.74 0.84

5.891*** 5.912*** 13.279*** 6.604*** 4.699**

**p < 0.01. ***p < 0.001.

in this particular survey many students had initially accessed e-HO, as a horizontal connection complementary to e-Learning, for fulfilling the requirements in their homework assignments within the general curriculum. Their relatively higher access frequencies might not have reflected that they indeed enjoyed surfing in this particular web as could be agreed in consensus for any freewill navigation in the Internet. Therefore, higher access frequencies do not guarantee their favorite preferences. Our aim would be greatly nullified if indeed it is the case. Therefore, how it might come out is also highly concerned in the present study. Through ANOVA, we found p < 0.001 for all the scales but ‘User friendliness’ (p < 0.01 instead), therefore significant differences surfaced on all the scales for different access frequencies as shown in Table 4. We further applied the Scheffe tests on all the scales to find out what the significant differences are referring to specifically. The results are summed up in Table 5. Overall speaking, we see students with higher access frequencies (once within a week) show more positive attitudes than those with lower access frequencies (once near or more than a month) toward e-HO on all of the five scales involved. The situation could be understood quite naturally that students with higher access frequencies were easier to find more content or resources for holistic education overall while those with lower access frequencies tended to scratch only on the surface. As a result, the former had explored on more of the details of the content and resources prepared and experienced as well higher satisfaction than the later. However, it is interesting and a little bit surprising as well at first to find that for those visiting the web once every 1–3 days the scores in all the scales but ‘leisure climate’ are a little bit lower than those visiting the web once every 4–7 days. This could be understood by the fact that the speed of content expansion or maintenance might not be fast enough to guarantee that they would run into something new every time for those who visited the web nearly on daily basis whereas it seemed more feasibly or readily perceived instead for those who visited the web once a week. It could be anticipated that this sort of minor flip would be greatly reduced or reversed if our perceivable maintenance is on the daily or even hourly basis. One thing worth noticing is that many of the students with higher access frequencies were actually coming from those classes wherein their instructors had required them to involve weekly in homework assigned within Web e-HO to connect their individual courses to it as the online version of this “larger experience” mentioned earlier. There indeed existed great possibilities that they just accessed the web reluctantly for their duty’s sake but in reality they didn’t like it at all and assessed negatively. However, when looking at the mean scores on all the scales of this particular group (those who had accessed e-HO by the route “Recommendation” and stayed in the frequencies of once every 1–3 days or 4–7 days) we find they are 4.23, 4.14, 3.74, 4.18 and 3.95 respectively that are much higher basically than the averages (with the only exception in ‘leisure climate’ though not significant) of which all the possible routes are included as shown in Table 5. Therefore, we could conclude that the particular suspicion didn’t emerge essentially. Of course, it is true that some of them were actually recommended or introduced to e-HO by their friends instead, this is relatively few though when compared with those recommended by their instructors who constituted the majority for this particular access route because many classes in general curriculum had involved. It would be more precise and valuable to distinguish specifically between these two channels in future studies. As a natural response in any human behavior, students who felt more positive toward the web along the way tended to visit it more frequently afterward and reinforced their positive feelings to certain degree while those catching less within tended to lapse into casual attitude toward and dilute their frequencies in accessing the particular learning environment. As a result, among those visiting the web more frequently there had accumulated more students who had got favored feelings toward e-HO. Theoretically, this effect of reinforcement would happen to all the scales involved including those of our major concern, namely, ‘Holistic resources’ and ‘Holistic inspiration’ with high satisfaction. This is evidently very encouraging as far as our first goal in relating to the holistic and horizontal dimensions is considered. However, it turned out extraordinarily significant and unique for ‘Leisure climate’ though its overall scores are not as high as those of the

Table 5 The Scheffe tests on all the relevant scales for different access frequencies. Access frequency (once per) 1 month[ 3–4 weeks 1–2 weeks 1–3 days 4–7 days Sig. a b c

N

Subset for alpha ¼ 0.05 Holistic resources 2

118 52 136 164 177

3.91 3.97 4.01 4.09 0.346

1

4.01 4.09 4.23 0.119

Feeling preferences 2 3.82 3.99a 3.92a

0.394

1 3.99a 3.92a 4.10 4.13 0.212

Leisure climate

Holistic inspiration

User friendliness

2

2

2

3.27 3.34 3.54

0.141

1

3.54 3.81b 3.76b 0.118

Data shifted in ‘Feeling preferences’ accordingly to fit in the particular order of access frequencies listed. Data shifted in ‘Leisure climate’ ibid. Data shifted in ‘User friendliness’ ibid.

3.83 4.01 4.01

0.359

1 4.01 4.01 4.12 4.19 0.326

3.60 3.79c 3.78c 3.91 0.077

1 3.79c 3.78c 3.91 3.97 0.505

754

C.-Y. Lee et al. / Computers & Education 56 (2011) 747–759

former two. It is related to our second goal for the mass characteristics and necessary that some deeper investigation should be further conducted. Here we see the gap between the two extremes of the mean scores with respect to access frequencies in this particular scale had grown far larger than those of the others. To contrast specifically among different scales, we define “distribution span” to be the gap between the two extremes of the mean scores for each one. As shown in Table 6, the distribution spans for the scales of ‘Holistic resources’, ‘Feeling preferences’, ‘Holistic inspiration’ and ‘User friendliness’ are 0.32, 0.31, 0.36 and 0.37 respectively, whereas that for ‘Leisure climate’ is 0.54, much higher than the previous ones which are of the same order by themselves. Indeed, leisure and enjoyment have been reported to be among the major favored preferences among this young generation when they are navigating in the Internet (Papastergiou & Solomonidou, 2005; Peng et al., 2006; Tsai, 2007). As significantly reported, students perceiving the Internet as a leisure tool show more positive attitudes and communicative self-efficacy than those regarding it as a mere functional means (Peng et al., 2006). Therefore, the effect of reinforcement has been set forth with much higher moving impetus to intensify the difference for ‘leisure climate’ than other functional scales to result in an extraordinary and much larger “distribution span”. This reveals the vital importance in taking into account students’ internet perceptions and preferences, besides our mere pedagogical purposes, while preparing for online studies among university students (Tsai, 2007, 2008). The role of leisure climate or entertainment factor has evidently grown very significantly after higher education has shifted from the elite centered to the mass dominated because the motivation for study is not as high for the later in comparison with the former. Just complaining that students do not work as hard nowadays as often heard on campus is inadequate if we do not respond as educators and adjust as teachers for this particular transformation. In addition, though ‘user friendliness’ was not particularly concerned when e-HO was started, nonetheless, it has also turned out very significant in this survey. Therefore how to enhance the efficacy related to these particular two scales has become one of the major works in the further improvement of the whole environment in spite that they have appeared as acceptable to most students for a learning platform like this. The incorporations with respect of those relevant factors dominating the present Internet subculture are important and fatal to the success of any teaching or learning platform in higher education for university students today. In summary, access frequency has turned out to be the most decisive and influential one among all the demographic variables. Care should be taken in the following difference analyses concerning other variables to see if their differences surfaced are coincident with or correlated to the access frequency differences to clear up their possible underlying relationships that are crucial to be aware of for our future development. 3.4. Grade level differences Going through ANOVA, we found significant difference had appeared on ‘Holistic resources’ among students in different grade levels as shown from the results in Table 7. We further applied the Scheffe test to find out it came specifically from between the junior and the graduate as shown in Table 8. The junior gave more positive response than the graduate concerning ‘Holistic resources’. One might possibly suspect that the participants of the lowest score here (referring to graduate students) are basically coincident with or dominated by those with access frequencies less than once a month for some reasons e.g., not being recommended or required by faculty of general curriculum. However, we found only 7 out of the 36 graduate students involved, namely 20%, accessed the web with frequencies less than once a month as shown in Table 8. Especially, 58% of them accessed the web once every 1–7 days, even highest among all the grade levels. As could be seen, the “Access frequency distribution” for the graduate is quite normal compared with other grade levels though the number of its participants is relatively small. So, there actually is no unusual and suspected coincidence detected in this survey and the specific significant difference surfaced here is basically grade level originated instead of any accidental access frequency coincidence. As students in CYCU where holistic education has been emphasized for more than a decade, the junior are mature enough to catch, in comparison with the freshman and sophomore who have been relatively new, the significance of holism overall and stable, relative to the senior facing an immediate commencement and all the uncertainties related, to appreciate all that inherited in the ‘Holistic resources’ of the web. Nonetheless, for the graduate, who are older in general to have fostered even broader knowledge backgrounds and cognitive capabilities, they might feel that the resources are inadequate for their epistemological capacities or their needs in higher-order cognitive domains in comparison with the undergraduate. This finding is in good agreement also with that reported previously for Web-based learning environments overall (Tsai, 2008) and, in this light, the reason why the senior are less satisfactory on this particular scale could also be understood as part of this transitional stage besides those mentioned above. As e-HO was initiated for the purpose of the integration of knowledge and the promotion of holism in general education for undergraduate students, it could be understood that the needs of the graduate had not been properly taken care of. However, because the number of graduate students in Taiwan has increased in a tremendous way in recent years, it has become necessary to incorporate more resources both wider and deeper in scope and content to meet the needs of the graduate because many of them have taken initiative and shown great interest to this particular learning environment as well. One step further, when the undergraduate and graduate overall are contrasted instead, we find that significant differences surfaced in all the content-related scales, namely ‘Holistic resources’ and ‘Holistic inspiration’ as shown in Table 9. From the mean scores obtained we see these two scales are more favored by the undergraduate than the graduate as expected. This could be understood in a similar way as that

Table 6 Comparison on the distribution spans for scales with significant Access frequency differences. Scale

Highest Mean

Lowest Mean

Distribution Span

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic inspiration User friendliness

4.23 4.13 3.81 4.19 3.97

3.91 3.82 3.27 3.83 3.60

0.32 0.31 0.54 0.36 0.37

C.-Y. Lee et al. / Computers & Education 56 (2011) 747–759

755

Table 7 The comparison of mean scores among different grade levels and results of ANOVA. Freshman

Sophomore

Junior

Senior

Graduate

Scale

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic inspiration User friendliness

3.98 3.94 3.57 4.01 3.85

0.64 0.65 0.73 0.67 0.72

4.10 4.00 3.50 4.08 3.73

0.54 0.52 0.69 0.51 0.70

4.17 4.09 3.72 4.16 3.91

0.67 0.71 0.87 0.70 0.87

4.11 4.06 3.68 4.05 3.86

0.58 0.63 0.79 0.62 0.80

3.87 3.92 3.44 3.83 3.75

0.67 0.57 0.60 0.64 0.91

3.164* 1.610 2.282 2.353 1.140

*p < 0.05.

discussed above though one more scale has appeared here. Graduate students’ automatic accesses to e-HO and their willing involvements in the survey indicated that the possible capacity of e-HO is a little bit more than we have anticipated and the need for a learning environment like this has turned out to be somehow greater than we have ever thought of as shall be further discussed later. 3.5. Discipline differences In order to cultivate upon the holistic and transdisciplinary significance of e-HO, it is very important also to find out if any significant difference surfaced for diverse discipline backgrounds. In the present study, we sorted through the statistics via different colleges. In CYCU, there are totally 7 distinct colleges including Science, Engineering, Electric Engineering and Computer Science (EE&CS), Business, Law, Humanities and Education (H&E), and Design. After applying ANOVA, we found no significant difference surfaced in those purpose driven scales, indicating the significance of e-HO as a holistic learning environment was quite well accepted by most students regardless of their disciplines. The differences, however, emerged instead in those auxiliary scales of ‘Leisure climate’ and ‘User friendliness’ as shown from the results in Table 10. We further applied the Scheffe tests on these two scales to find out what the significant differences are referring to specifically. From Table 11, we see students from College of Engineering show more favor to the scales of ‘Leisure climate’ and ‘User friendliness’ with very significant differences from those of College of Law with least agreement. The distribution spans for these two scales are as large as 0.53 and 0.52 respectively. This reminds us of the unusual distribution span (0.54) encountered earlier in the access frequency differences for ‘Leisure climate’. One might possibly suspect, as discussed earlier in the contrast between the undergraduate and graduate, that the participants of the lowest score here (referring to students from College of Law) are basically coincident with or dominated by those with access frequencies less than once a month for some yet unknown reasons. However, we see only 4 out of the 18 students from College of Law, namely 22%, accessed the web with frequencies less than once a month as shown in Table 11. As could be seen, the “Access frequency distribution” for College of Law is quite normal compared with those of others though the number of its participants is relatively small also because there is only one and single department in this particular college. So, there actually is no unusual and suspected coincidence detected in the present case either. The significant differences inherent in these two scales are evidently discipline related. One possible explanation for these particular differences could be related to the fact that students from College of Law are usually more regulation minded and practical rigidity oriented and tend to overlook those relatively soft leisure elements around while those from College of Engineering have experienced more space for free imaginations and inventions and are easier in comparison to perceive the leisure climate and friendly atmosphere inherent or permeated in a learning environment like e-HO. However, for a profound exploration on the related differences between these two distinct disciplines in general more comprehensive and elaborated studies are evidently needed. As for the particularly significant differences already emerged here, they remind us that care must be taken in respecting the discipline backgrounds of the target users for the efficacy of a learning environment whenever it is constructed. 3.6. Access route differences In order to see the effects among different access routes to e-HO, we compare the mean scores on each scale for all possible access routes including “University Homepage”, “Campus DM”, “Recommendation”, and “Others”. Statistical difference surfaced on ‘Holistic inspiration’ among various access routes after ANOVA as shown in Table 12. Further Scheffe test has indicated specifically that significant difference appeared between the route of “Recommendation” and that of “Others” unspecified. A further look at the present access route differences against the earlier access frequency differences has indeed revealed some coincidence between them in contrast to the previous cases. As could be seen from Table 13, the “Access frequency distribution” for the access route “Others” is characteristically distinct and opposite from those of the rest routes. Specifically, the percentage of students with higher access frequency (once per 1–7 days) for the route “Others”, namely 31%, is the lowest with large gap behind the rest Table 8 The Scheffe test on ‘Holistic resources’ for different grade levels with Access frequency distributions attached. Subset for alpha ¼ 0.05 Grade level

N

2

Graduate Freshman Sophomore Senior Junior Sig.

36 198 135 135 143

3.87 3.98 4.10 4.11 0.139

Access frequency distribution (once per) 1 3.98 4.10 4.11 4.17 0.368

1–7 days

1–2 wks

3–4wks

1 month[

21 (58%) 106 (54%) 72 (53%) 65 (48%) 77 (54%)

8 (22%) 36 (18%) 25 (18%) 33 (24%) 34 (24%)

0 (0%) 16 (8%) 17 (13%) 9 (7%) 10 (7%),

7 (20%) 40 (20%) 21 (16%) 28 (21%) 22 (15%)

756

C.-Y. Lee et al. / Computers & Education 56 (2011) 747–759

Table 9 The comparison of mean scores between the undergraduate and graduate and results of ANOVA. Undergraduate

Graduate

Scale

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic inspiration User friendliness

4.08 4.01 3.61 4.07 3.84

0.62 0.64 0.77 0.64 0.77

3.87 3.92 3.44 3.83 3.75

0.67 0.57 0.60 0.64 0.91

4.137* 0.699 1.651 4.605* 0.433

*p < 0.05.

routes, especially the “Recommendation” with a percentage as high as 58%, while the percentage of students with lower access frequency (once 1 month[) for the route “Others”, namely 39%, is the highest with even greater gap beyond the rest routes, especially the “Recommendation” with a percentage as low as 16%. Therefore, we see the significant difference surfaced between the route of “Recommendation” and that of “Others” is actually correlated to and consistent with the result discussed earlier for the same scale appeared in the access frequency differences. Students who had accessed e-HO through route “Others” unspecified tended to lapse in their access frequencies and resulted in less appreciation on ‘holistic inspiration’. It could be understood in the following. While students from the route “Others” could catch quite well in all the other scales within certain amount of time, to reach a fuller appreciation on ‘Holistic inspiration’ which lies somehow under the surface of any casual surfing once a while only it needs more reflections and connections made in the particular learning environment. Among those who had been recommended to e-HO by faculty or friends many of them tended to interact and feedback with the recommenders or classmates concerning the content and activities inherent in this web. Especially, as mentioned earlier many instructors had integrated e-HO into their individual courses and assigned their students with some material therein to read or activities to get involved with in due time or on weekly basis. As a result, it reinforces their impression on the overall significance of e-HO as a holistic learning environment. As many students have echoed, if not recommended or introduced by their instructors they might not have found such a learning environment which is characteristically different from e-Learning and has broaden and brought tremendous impacts upon their view concerning knowledge and the meaning of holism. Therefore, the role of a faculty member is very unique and significant in this whole endeavor of holistic education in this Internet era. Faculty with certain degree of Internet Quotient will find many opportunities not only to enhance the teaching efficacy of their individual courses but also to lead their students into a more integrative and holistic view of life as well through a platform like e-HO.

4. Discussion One particularly significant and important conclusion after all these difference analyses for the various demographic variables is clear in that the access frequency has played a very influential and decisive role for the overall success. As mentioned earlier, many of the students who accessed e-HO with higher frequencies came from those classes under their instructors’ demands for the fulfillments of their homework assignments on weekly bases. This is in accordance with earlier findings that people do so with a desire for rewards or various personal purposes (Fusilier et al., 2005; Wasserman & Richmond-Abbott, 2005). However, it is interesting to find out in our study that not all the students accessed e-HO with so practical a purpose only. In fact, our data have shown that more than half of those who accessed e-HO once per 1–7 days were actually coming from other routes than that through instructors. Unlike the former, they accessed the particular environment in their free will without any obligation as such. Nonetheless, the most important thing is, as far as our goal for an integrative mass higher education is concerned, higher access frequencies do result in more positive attitudes to and higher efficacy for e-HO. More efforts in keeping on promotions with all possibilities would be of vital importance to the success of the whole endeavor. It may be quite encouraging to those who have been deeply concerned with holistic education because access frequency differences could be bridged easier by the efforts of faculty in relating more individual courses to e-HO as a holistic and horizontal platform for the general curriculum. However, discipline differences are relatively more difficult to narrow as they are relating to long term distinct practices and have rooted deep in the cognitive system. But this might in turn be one of the charitable reasons why we need a learning environment like e-HO wherein students continue to experience interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary engagements to cross the boarder or the limit of individual disciplines and foster a more holistic as well as integrative view of knowledge and life overall. Actually, discipline differences in students’ use and perception of technology in general or the Internet in particular have also been observed or reported by a few researchers (e.g., Conole, de Laat, Dillon, & Darby, 2008; Selwyn, 2008). In the present context, the difference surfaced between those with backgrounds in engineering and law involves the scale of ‘Leisure climate’ which has been one of the major concerns in this particular study. In comparison with the general practices in e-Learning, the reason why the scales of ‘Leisure climate’ and ‘Feeling preferences’ have been particularly emphasized in this study is basically related to the ‘mass’ consideration besides the ‘holistic’ as depicted in the introduction. Few points shall be explained and stressed further. Table 10 The comparison of mean scores among different colleges and results of ANOVA. Engineering

Design

Scale

Mean

H&E SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic inspiration User friendliness

4.04 3.99 3.55 4.11 3.90

0.73 0.79 0.83 0.73 0.72

4.12 3.99 3.62 4.07 3.79

0.51 0.54 0.75 0.55 0.76

4.08 4.00 3.47 4.04 3.86

0.63 0.64 0.78 0.61 0.76

4.10 4.05 3.75 4.05 3.96

0.66 0.68 0.81 0.72 0.79

3.86 3.99 3.50 4.02 3.53

0.62 0.43 0.62 0.58 0.94

3.99 3.99 3.59 4.03 3.76

0.65 0.66 0.68 0.60 0.75

4.03 4.04 3.22 3.97 3.44

0.60 0.58 0.58 0.68 0.86

1.101 0.181 2.512* 0.196 2.606*

*p < 0.05.

Business

Science

EE&CS

Law

C.-Y. Lee et al. / Computers & Education 56 (2011) 747–759

757

Table 11 The Scheffe tests on ‘Leisure climate’ and ‘User friendliness’ for different disciplines with Access frequency distributions attached. Subset for alpha ¼ 0.05 College

N

Law Science Design H&E EE&CS Business Engineering Sig.

18 111 30 58 76 175 179

Leisure climate 2

a

1

3.22 3.47 3.50 3.55 3.59 3.62

3.47 3.50 3.55 3.59 3.62 3.75 0.125

0.066

Access frequency distribution (once per) User friendliness 2

1

3.44 3.86a 3.53a 3.90a 3.76a 3.79a 0.085

3.86a 3.53a 3.90a 3.76a 3.79a 3.96 0.515

1–7 days

1–2 wks

3–4wks

1 month[

10 (56%) 52 (47%) 16 (53%) 24 (41%) 38 (50%) 93 (53%) 108 (60%)

3 (17%) 25 (22%) 6 (20%) 15 (26%) 21 (28%) 40 (23%) 26 (14%)

1 (5%) 14 (13%) 3 (10%) 5 (9%) 4 (5%) 15 (9%) 10 (6%)

4 (22%) 20 (18%) 5 (17%) 14 (24%) 13 (17%) 27 (15%) 35 (20%)

Data shifted in ‘User friendliness’ accordingly to fit in the particular order of colleges listed.

First of all, the motivation for and the attitude toward study as generally observed in the mass university students today differ significantly from those of the elite in the past. Failings in catching this tremendous transformation and adjusting accordingly in the pedagogy have resulted in many frustrated professors across campuses, at least in Taiwan. Indeed, it has not been easy for every one of us as faculty, especially the senior, to respond to this particular change without some major degree of difficulties. Furthermore, the impacts of ICT overall, in particular the Internet, have been so great and swift also that digital divides have emerged not only globally between different countries but also locally between faculty and students on campus. Overall speaking, traditional e-Learning has been slow in responding to this shift though there have been so many findings and reports for those particular needs in interaction, enjoyment and leisure etc. over the past decade (e.g., Fraser, 1999; Hedberg, 2006; Peng et al., 2006; Prensky, 2001; Tsai, 2007, 2008). As particularly and correctly pointed out by Conole et al. (2008), students’ use of ICT for learning is by no means for learning only but also intermingled with use of these tools for social and leisure activities. Therefore, to derive better pedagogical results some proper incorporations of these elements or atmospheres into any learning environment like e-HO have become increasingly important, especially when autonomous learning has become more and more popular today even to such an extent that “learning” has taken over from “teaching” as the mainstream activity in higher education (e.g., Scott, 2002). Though connecting to e-HO as a part of the general curriculum, thus an educational requirement, would certainly be a good suggestion for our end, it is nonetheless not quite a comfortable request yet to all the faculty members at this stage because many of them are not Internet-minded enough to carry it out without much stress despite some of them have intensively done so and seen good results for a period of time. Experiences indicated that very few students will continue to access e-Learning after the class has done over with, at least that has been the case in Taiwan where many students accessed e-Learning with a mere practical purpose as mentioned in the introduction. However, our study has indicated that the number of students involved in the survey who came across e-HO via university homepage is almost the same as that of those who accessed the environment through the introduction by their instructors as a requirement of the curriculum. About more than one half of the former stayed in higher access frequencies (i.e., once every 1–7 days) compatible with that of the later with similar satisfactions, though the former continued to access the environment in their own free will in contrast to the later who did so formally with an obligation. Phenomenon like this has hardly been observed in e-Learning wherein factors like ‘Feeling preferences’ and ‘Leisure climate’ are seldom considered though the contents and materials therein are often very substantial and beneficial as well. Therefore, from the data of our study we see though the latter accessed e-HO with a desire for practical rewards in their class achievements (Fusilier et al., 2005), it does not exclude the possibility that many of them continued to do so also for their own personal purposes of inner illumination or edification (Wasserman & Richmond-Abbott, 2005) inherent in its ‘Holistic resources’ and ‘Holistic inspiration’ reinforced by or intermingled with enjoyment or leisure inherent in ‘Feeling preferences’ and ‘Leisure climate’ as emphasized by various researchers in previous studies (Conole et al., 2008; Papastergiou & Solomonidou, 2005; Peng et al., 2006; Tsai, 2007, 2008). Of course, feelings of inadequacy to ICT overall, especially the Internet, have been reflected by many teachers and reported by various research groups (e.g., Galanouli, Murphy, & Gardner, 2004). Being introspective is not always easy for people as faculty with dignity on top of the embarrassment, in comparison with their young students, for the various technical inadequacies in ICT and all that. However, there might exist some possibility feasible at this juncture for the resolution of this sticky problem to some extent, only if the administration could envisage providing some positions as “e-moderators” as rightfully suggested by Salmon (2006) for those relatively few faculty members with some transdisciplinary experiences and familiar as well with contemporary Internet subculture to take up the major tasks. It would be sufficient and reasonable for the rest of the instructors to encourage or demand their students to access e-HO in proper or manageable ways (e.g., not as intensive as those on weekly bases) for higher efficacy of this particular learning environment as indicated in the results of our study. In addition, it is interesting to note that our analyses have found some significant differences concerning how they came across to e-HO. Purpose driven and official effort weighted paths to e-HO like “Recommendation” and “University Homepage” have resulted in students’ Table 12 The comparison of mean scores among different access routes to e-HO and results of ANOVA. University Homepage

Campus DM

Scale

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

F

Holistic resources Feeling preferences Leisure climate Holistic inspiration User friendliness

4.07 4.04 3.67 4.07 3.87

0.63 0.64 0.79 0.64 0.78

3.86 3.78 3.52 4.00 3.56

0.89 0.80 0.85 0.74 0.92

4.11 4.03 3.58 4.08 3.84

0.58 0.62 0.73 0.62 0.78

3.94 3.85 3.40 3.80 3.69

0.59 0.57 0.74 0.68 0.71

2.171 2.410 2.169 3.063* 1.782

*p < 0.05.

Recommendation

Others

758

C.-Y. Lee et al. / Computers & Education 56 (2011) 747–759

Table 13 The Scheffe test on ‘holistic inspiration’ for different access routes with Access frequency distributions attached. Access route others Campus DM University Homepage Recommendation Sig.

N 49 25 284 289

Subset for alpha ¼ 0.05

Access frequency distribution (once per)

2

1–7 days

1–2 wks

3–4wks

1 month[

15(31%) 11(44%) 146(51%) 169(58%)

10 (20%) 6 (24%) 60 (21%) 60 (21%)

5 (10%) 4 (16%) 28 (10%) 15 (5%)

19 (39%) 4 (16%) 50 (18%) 45 (16%)

1

3.80 4.00 4.07

4.00 4.07 4.08 0.400

0.109

higher access frequencies to release far more significant impacts upon students regarding their holistic development overall in contrast to those paths denoted “Others” unspecified through which some students ran into this particular environment accidentally with casualty and tended to lapse in their access frequencies and received less benefit. Therefore, we see again the important roles the administration and faculty could play for the efficacy of a learning environment like this. Because the flow of e-HO is frequently on the move in expansion with new resources or links added into and various activities going on here and there, students’ overall impression or perception toward this learning environment may continue to go through some minor degree of variation though the degree of change in this web may be small in comparison with the overall content toward its post developing stage now. It should then be anticipated that the satisfaction of the ‘holistic resources’ scale may continue to increase gradually while this process of expansion keeps on going. However, other scales than this shall be a continual challenge depending upon how its original vision for the holistic and integrative development of the mass young generation today be seriously pursued. We would like to stress that merely packing a website with all possible facets of content and resources does not guarantee the success for the end. In other words, the ‘holistic resources’ scale itself alone does not in general imply the final result looked for. The ‘holistic inspiration’ scale must be continually cultivated as well, for it will help set forth the moving impetus for the particular learning platform besides the aforementioned mass students’ reflecting scales like ‘Leisure climate’, ‘User friendliness’ and ‘Feeling preferences’. Especially a fuller incorporation of other major elements in present day Internet subculture would be very crucial also for its future success. For better pedagogical results, as instructors we should educate and teach students where they are. It means that we need to meet them and interact with them in present day’s Internet subculture wherein they reside as “digital natives” (Prensky, 2001; Williams, 2007). For this particular need some faculty have to involve themselves more intensively to moderate and direct the flow in e-HO. They should be released into the work of supervision, coordinating and promotion of this particular learning environment overall beyond their individual courses in e-Learning as suggested above. The role of such an “e-moderator” emerged as a new paradigm for contemporary teachers or educators should be seriously considered as also stressed by Salmon (2006). Not only that this role has been secured is sufficient but also that it is set out in its fullest capacity possible is necessary for the overall success. Moreover, from the unexpected involvements of graduate students as mentioned earlier, we could not but ponder that there might exist some interesting future possibilities with certain prospect for a learning platform like this. For example, with the ongoing expansion of the resources and activities of a web like e-HO, it could be realized as an extended lifelong learning environment as well to result in a continual and coherent education system, in contrast to those started many times outside the infrastructure of the university and hence incoherent and fragmented still as they normally are. It is in agreement with and served as an example of the observation by Williams (2007) that the convergence of higher and further education might become part of the tertiary education landscape. While e-Learning has launched forth for more than a couple of decades and been studied and improved intensively for many years, holistic and horizontal learning environments like e-HO complementary to e-Learning to close up the knowledge network are in desperate need to be widely constructed, cultivated and studied to help result in an integrative higher education in this characteristic Information Age. In the present study, we have obtained some useful findings and arrived at some valuable conclusions that might be helpful to the further advancement and improvement in this particular endeavor though lots remain to be cultivated and investigated along the way.

Appendix. All the items (N [ 14) of the questionnaire in e-HO survey.

Factor Factor 1: Holistic resources HR1- university resources: HR2- worldwide resources: HR3- modern significance: HR4- lifelong learning: HR5- abundant content: Factor 2: Feeling preferences FP1- activity enjoyment: FP2- delightful learning: FP3- overall satisfaction: FP4- recommending zeal: Factor 3: Leisure climate LC1- creative playground: LC2- leisure environment: Factor 4: Holistic Inspiration HI1- holism promotion: HI2- inspirational atmosphere: Factor 5: User friendliness UF1- friendly interfaces:

Detailed item description Web e-HO has become a campus resources center in music, fine art, literature and general education overall. Through Web e-HO I can access easily many excellent resources worldwide in general education. Web e-HO is significant in the modernization of general education in this Information Age. Web e-HO can serve as a platform for my lifelong learning after I graduate. Web e-HO provides abundant content. I I I I

enjoy attending the activities in Web e-HO. can learn many things in delightful ways through the activities in Web e-HO. am satisfied with Web e-HO overall. am glad to recommend Web e-HO to my friends.

Web e-HO is my creative playground. Web e-HO is one of the leisure sites I would like to visit after class. Web e-HO is suitable for the promotion of holistic education. The content and activities in Web e-HO are inspirational and helpful to me. The interfaces in Web e-HO are user-friendly.

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