Abstract
In the past decade, the developments of the Internet and educational technologies have facilitated innovative approaches to modern education. In addition, computers and related software are used in all professional fields of the workplace; therefore, students should acquire related essential abilities before they enter the workforce. Teachers should devote attention to designing and implementing appropriate online teaching methods and guiding their students to adopt suitable learning strategies to develop related abilities and improve their learning effectiveness. Thus, in this study, two innovative teaching methods, namely self-organized learning (SOL) and learners-as-designers (LaD), were integrated with educational technology and ubiquitous learning (u-learning) to develop students’ computing skills, academic motivation, and engagement in a blended course. A quasi-experiment was conducted to examine the effects of ubiquitous SOL and LaD. The experiment used a 2 (SOL vs. non-SOL) × 2 (LaD vs. non-LaD) factorial pretest–posttest design. First-year students from four classes who were taking a one-semester university course titled “Applied Information Technology: Data Processing” were the participants in the empirical study. The results revealed that students who received the ubiquitous LaD intervention exhibited significantly improved computing skills compared with those of students who did not receive the intervention. However, the ubiquitous SOL intervention did not enhance students’ computing skills, academic motivation, or engagement. The study results may be used as references for online educators when designing an online, cloud, or ubiquitous course for their students.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call