Exploring factors affecting the Greek high school students’ participation in Geographical and Environmental Research Project using social Web 2.0 applications. A case study

Abstract

This study is a continuation of the previous year’s work on the analysis of sociocultural constructivist interactions of Greek high school students (N=16) during an eight-month geographical and environmental research project in a social computing and specifically a free social bookmarking site, Diigo. All learning actions led students to reach the higher phase of sociocultural constructivist interaction, progressively developing essential geographic skills, creating an active social network (with remarkable distinction in the cohesion, power and role structures). The results also showed that the density value of students’ interaction and the quality of their discussion were at a satisfactory level with most complete exchanges, throughout the project. However, there were significant differences in individual participation rates of students in the exploratory process (i.e., inactive, moderate, and active). This was important information for us and we needed to further explore the factors affecting the students’ participation in corresponding actions. Searching the literature, we identified the factors, such as students’ course performance, previous experience and a variety of sociodemographic characteristics with potential influence on their participation. Thus in this study, we correlated the activity and quality of students’ project participation with the above factors. The results of correlation analysis suggest that their participation level was positively and significantly correlated with their previous experience in geographical and environmental actions at the 0.01 level. Also, their participation level was positively related to their gender and parental education level. On the other hand, there were negative but at a moderate level of correlation between their participation level and their performance in courses theoretical direction and financial stability.