E-character education among digital natives: Focusing on character exemplars

Abstract

This study focused on open online character education implemented in e-HO, a holistic learning environment embedded with a character exemplar video-on-demand (VOD) system. E-HO, designed to use the Internet to enhance holistic and character education's efficacies in a way that is fitting for and favored by digital natives, also aimed to counteract the negative impacts of the mass media. A comprehensive investigation of a survey conducted among 1013 university students for this e-character education program is presented with a detailed study on students' preferences referring to various demographic variables including grade level, gender, discipline and the number of exemplar exposure instances concerning the five scales extracted in this particular survey. In accordance with previous studies, this study suggested that grade level differences could be explained by cognitive ability. Gender differences and discipline differences both emerged because of differences in ''people-things'' orientation between genders and also between disciplines with distinct, long-term professional foci and practices. Compelling counterbalancing effects were witnessed between the developments of discipline differences and grade level differences, which were greatly enhanced by consistently implementing holistic education. A preliminary ''cognitive threshold'' of VOD exposure within a semester among the female participants appeared at 10 viewings, beyond which substantially more effective pedagogical efficacies emerged.