Evaluation of the Use of the Online Community Tool Ning for Support of Student Interaction and Learning Goran Buba², Ana ori¢, Tihomir Orehova£ki Faculty of Organization and Informatics University of Zagreb Pavlinska 2, 42000 Varaºdin, Croatia {goran.bubas, ana.coric, tihomir.orehovacki}@foi.hr Abstract. The interaction within groups or net- A recent review of literature [17] indicated that works of learners can be eectively supported with wikis and blogs are frequently mentioned in re- the use of online community sites like Facebook, search reports regarding the use of Web 2.0 tools MySpace or Twitter. In our study we investigated in higher education: the potential uses of the online community tool - Wikis have the potential to facilitate peer-to- Ning in a hybrid university course for part-time peer learning and support collaborative creation of students. The introduction of Ning supported knowledge and problem solving. the interaction between students themselves and - Blogs can be used for stimulating interactions enabled them to help each other in solving various among learners, creating students' personal docu- problems. The Ning tool was used by the students mentation in form of an historical record and col- to present the results of their work and create lecting student work similarly to the use of an e- online diaries. Some of the technical features of portfolio, as well as for enhancing students' self- Ning that are important for e-learning communities presentation and social presence among peers. are discussed in the paper as well as the results of The investigation of the use of social software the course evaluation survey regarding the eects (discussion forums, blogs, e-portfolios, etc.) in ed- of its use on student motivation and collaboration. ucation revealed that active learning experiences are superior to passive models of instruction [6]. Keywords. e-learning, social software, commu- Recently, there is a growing interest in the use nity of learners, Ning of social networking sites in education, partly be- cause they are a widely used virtual environment, especially by the student population. For instance, 1 Introduction in June 2010 the social networking site Facebook reported 400 million active users, and in its recent Social software are various types of web tools or ser- study the Pew Internet and American Life Project vices that provide the users with possibility to gen- [16] reported that 73% of young adults (ages 18- erate, present and share user-made content and in 29) in the United States with an Internet connec- educational use such tools enable exchange of ideas, tion use social network sites (among which 73% collaborative creation/sharing of knowledge, peer of online prole owners were users of Facebook). support and feedback (see: [2, 94-95]). Some exam- It must be noted that an adoption study related ples of social software that may be used in educa- to the use of Facebook in education revealed that tion include wikies, blogs, podcasting, e-portfolios, communication, collaboration, resource and ma- social bookmarking, social networking sites (Face- terial sharing have a signicant positive eect on book, Twitter), audio- and videoconferencing tools, educational usage [20]. This study indicated that Google Earth, RSS web feed formats, etc. [18, 2-3], some of the reasons for Facebook adoption may be [22]. that it enables users to create a personal prole, communicate, share information, create photo al- be applied to Web 2.0 applications, whose narrow bums, chat and send messages, participate in group specialization is in case of some of those web appli- discussions, etc. Similar adoption related function- cations suitable for conducting educational or busi- alities are also oered by microblogging services like ness related online activities. However, recent stud- Twitter and online community sites like Elgg or ies [8][25][28] have shown that previous approaches Ning. to evaluating usability are not appropriate for Web The use of microblogging services has been con- 2.0 applications and therefore a set of attributes sidered to have the potential to contribute to the for assessing their overall quality was proposed [24]. e-learning and m-learning environment, predomi- For instance, some of the potentially important us- nantly because of the possibility to network and ability attributes of Web 2.0 tools could be: build community with other learners [5], as well as because of their informal learning [4]. • Navigability, capability of web application to There are numerous examples of the use of so- provide the users with eective and alternative cial software and the so-called Pedagogy 2.0 ap- navigation techniques [13]; proach in tertiary education which conrm that so- Understandability, extent to which the capa- cial networking sites like Facebook and Twitter can • bilities of the web application are easy to com- be eectively used to support e-learning, improve prehend and unambiguous to the user [24]; interactivity and social presence of learners, as well as facilitate collaborative knowledge discovery and • Reliability, the capacity of web application to sharing [21]. There are also reports of the use of maintain a stable and appropriate level of per- online community sites like Elgg and Ning for ed- formance under specic conditions for a spec- ucation purpose [22]. Such Web 2.0 tools can fa- ied period of time [13]; cilitate learner participation, creativity and online identity formation creating a need for more research • Security, ability to prevent accidental or delib- on students' use of those tools in formal and infor- erate unauthorized access to les or personal mal learning [7]. data [13]; However, social networking sites are not to be Satisfaction, capability of web application to considered as a replacement for Learning Manage- • meet user expectations [24]. ment Systems but as supplement tools for knowl- edge construction and sharing, collaboration and dialogue with transparency and the ability to cre- 2 Problem and hypotheses ate awareness between students as some of their most important characteristics [3]. The main problem of the study that is presented in Usability is one of the key factors of software this paper is to test the potential of the use of the quality and is often mentioned as crucial for the online community tool Ning to support pedagogy, success of web applications [19][24]. It describes the facilitate student interaction, and improve satisfac- quality of web applications from the viewpoint of tion and learning of students of the academic course people who use them. There are many denitions of entitled Computer-Mediated Communication. usability, which dier according to the theoretical Four hypotheses have been formulated to inves- models they are based on. However, usability is not tigate the problem of the study: considered as an attribute itself but as a separate H1. The use of the online community tool Ning unit composed from several dierent attributes of is perceived as useful in comparison to other Web quality. Consequently, usability can be dened as 2.0 tools used in the academic course Computer- an extent to which it is easy to nd and understand mediated Communication and it contributes to the information located on the website [15]; as the abil- educational eects of this course. ity to easily and eectively use the software product H2. The use of the online community tool Ning is [1]; and as an extent to which software allows users perceived as interesting and motivating to the stu- to achieve specic objectives with eciency, eec- dents of the academic course Computer-Mediated tiveness and satisfaction in a specied context of Communication and it also contributes to the en- use [11][12]. All aforementioned denitions could richment of educational experience of students. H3. The use of the online community tool part-time students who were between 19 and 35 Ning facilitates collaborative learning and peer in- years of age. The surveys collected in the rst teraction in study groups of the academic course group were from 12 male and 11 female subjects Computer-Mediated Communication. (N=23), while the surveys collected in the second H4. The technology of the Ning tool does not group were from 10 male and 5 female subjects manifest usability problems when it is used in con- (N=15). For the purpose of this study the survey crete educational settings of the academic course data is supplemented with observation of student Computer-Mediated Communication. work and online discussions as a result of their use of the Ning tool. 3 Method 4 Results The online community tool Ning was used in the academic year 2009/2010 in two study groups The responses of the subjects to the survey items of part time students of the academic course Evaluation of usefulness of working with Ning sys- Computer-Mediated Communication at the Fac- tem and Evaluation of usability of technology of ulty of Organization and Informatics, University the Ning system in teaching (possible educational of Zagreb, Croatia. The students were asked to eects) are presented in Figure 1. It must be noted use Ning to create their personal proles, upload that the response scale was in the range from 1 photos and links to video les on YouTube that - very poor to 5 - very good. It can be con- illustrate the content of the course, participate in cluded from the data presented in Figure 1 that discussion forums on various course related topics, Ning received rather high average evaluations re- keep an online diary of course related activities (lec- garding usefulness (M=4.66) and usability of tech- tures) in a blog, and present the artifacts that they nology in teaching (M=4.42). Also, Ning received had created with Web 2.0 tools in their blog. The slightly better average evaluation than the mind- students could also make friend lists and participate maping tool Bubbl.us or block-diagram tool Gliy.