Jung-Mei Wang
Graduate Institute of Digital Learning and Education, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
Guo-Li Chiou
Program of Learning Sciences, National Taiwan Normal University
Abstract
This study aimed at exploring how and why students used an online micro-curriculum platform through a naturalistic research approach. The participants of the study were 175 eighth graders recruited from two middle schools. An open-ended questionnaire was administrated to the participants to inquire how they used the online micro-curriculum platform and why they used or did not used the platform for watching micro-curriculum videos. We conducted qualitative content analysis to develop the major categories of the factors that affected the participants’ tendency to use the online platform. In general, the participants would spontaneously use the platform if they considered the micro-curriculum videos helpful in rehearsing what they had learned at school, in providing information about scientific experiments, and in improving their performance on school tests. In addition, the participants expressed their positive feedbacks to the micro-curriculum videos as having several distinct features, such as multimedia-based content, convenience, repeatability, and the affordance of autonomy. In contrast, the participants hesitated to use the online platform because of time limitation, constant distraction, mental and physical fatigue, instability of the platform system, and restricted access to the Internet.
Keywords :instructional video, tutorial, e-learning platform