The Effects of Online Teachers' Social Role and Learning Style on Students' Essay Writing Performance and Critical Thinking in a Wiki Environment

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the effects of online teachers' social roles and students' learning style on their performance and critical thinking skill in a wiki environment. A total of 120 high school students from two sub-urban secondary schools in a northern state in Malaysia were involved in this 2x2 factorial quasi-experimental study. The students were instructed to write and edit their essays in wiki with the assistance of e-moderators with either social roles (SROT) or pedagogical roles (PROT). While a learning style questionnaire was used to measure the students' active or reflective learning style, their post-test scores were used to gauge their essay performance. Also, their postings in the wiki environment were analyzed to determine their critical thinking. The findings indicated that the SROT group performed significantly lower in essay performance than the PROT group. However, there were no significant differences in critical thinking and performance between the reflective and active students in the SROT group. This study revealed that as the roles of SROT teacher are limited, it has affected the students' performance. Also, the differences in learning style did not influence their performance and critical thinking in a wiki environment.