Stakeholder Analysis
During the research of my issue,
three audiences prominently stood out and were active within the academic
conversations of the uses and skills associated with online writing courses for
college freshmen: The college freshmen students themselves, the college
professors, and the institutions from whom theses classes are distributed from.
These three groups have greatly argued back and forth between the efficiency
and costs of using online learning modules compared to traditional teaching
within classrooms.
Students feel motivated to use
online learning due to ideas of trying newer methods, however they admit to
being restrained from certain online work because of time management (Huynh et
al., 2003; Kabassi and Virvou, 2004). Yet, results from experiments show that
students develop greatly in critical thinking, research skills, and evaluation
(New Media Consortium, 2007). However, less social interaction can be occurred
and a higher withdrawal rate is proved. Basically, these college freshmen are
stakeholders because they generally serve as guinea pigs for these online
programs and they truly deserve to get the best teaching method to maximize all
of their hard work.
Instructors
serve as stakeholders due to the potential of them losing their job or/and losing
the face-to-face interaction teachers once had before. However, professors are given a larger
audience while teaching the same coursework as before, thus expanding more
knowledge. Teachers also complain that they must become technologically savvy
while planning the module’s coursework – which takes double the time for a
traditional setting lesson plan (Zhang et al., 2006).
Finally,
the universities serve as another stakeholder because they are actually paying
the monetary costs and must fluctuate between methods to maximize the college
freshmen’s education. Larger secondary institutions, such as UCF, find it
rather ideal for online writing courses due to the student population. However,
smaller campuses cannot easily afford this method of learning and the increase
in technology would also increase to the number of staff around campus. . This
increase in technology generally requires a corresponding increase in support
staff as well (Young, 2001). It was also noted that departments between schools
and this becomes an inter-department type of conflict. As well as certain
members of the staff being unwilling or unaccepting of newer teaching methods.
Overall,
these three groups truly give to the academic conversation of writing online
courses. The solution will be found by incorporating all of the dislikes made
by each and every stakeholder, or the most important, and hopefully a better
result will come out of this project.
Genre Analysis
Between the stakeholders present in
my research (students, instructors, and universities), they all have share
uniform characteristics for each and every source. Overall, they establish
credibility, present their results, and use certain formatting to create an
effective paper. Here I will break down the certain features each of these
sources contain and the functions of each do.
First off, most of these academic
papers begin with an abstract. What this does is provide the background to the
readers, whether they may be academic or non-academic, and fully explains the issue
at hand and why it is so important to discuss. Next, the author’s state their
credentials such as their name, of course, their profession, degrees, and any
past work they may have had. It is also possible for authors to leave their
contact information so people may ask them questions about their research to
potentially better their work. Still, what credentials really do is establish
ethos and trust within the reader. Next, is the introduction which states the
true purpose of the paper and the why the topic was picked for further
research. This also goes into what researchers and scholars are currently
talking about concerning the issue at hand, which helps the reader get
involved. A planning section is also common within papers as to map out the steps
taken prior to experimentation. In this section, authors add their hypothesis
as well. Usually after planning, researchers use their results to give a brief
summary of the physical set up of the experiment and a wrap up of what took
place in the experiment. During the results process, the author moreover
provides actual data that was gathered from the experiment for the reader to
interpret and take as original data. Following the results is the project
evaluation. Here really includes the final summary and gathers all of the data
together and explains what happened. The author may evaluate the data here as
well and mention how it could have been better by adding or removing a factor.
Commonly a references section is after the evaluation. The references is usually
bullet pointed which lists all of the sources and gives the full citation for
each source that was used as support within the main paper. Using this also
gives the reader authors or journals to look into to and also grants more
credibility to the paper’s author.
Above are the common elements placed
within these sources, however there are extra subheadings that were used or
just formatting and organization skills that were not mentioned before. Within
all of these sources and many more, authors use in text citations to place
information found by other authors within the text to add to an argument or
place statistics. An appendix could be used as well to furthermore list
questions for the reader. Researchers use the appendix as a tool to allow the reader
to provide feedback about the project/experiment and explain how it could have
been better. Another sub-header can include methodology. What this does is
specify in absolute detail about the experiment and it even gives a background
of the participants or “variables” used within the experiment. Charts or data
tables are even used in a lot of these sources. These factors easily portray
the results of the project for readers to visualize and almost physically grasp
the information stated in the results and evaluation sections. Along with
organization, it is highly common for authors to use the MLA formatting but it
is also accepted for APA style. Either way, any other type of format is not
accepted in the academic community and using either MLA or APA demonstrates a
professional setting in the paper. Another final section that may be added to
these academic papers would include the discussion. This contributes the
author’s personal reflection concerning the data and it is common for the
author to use this to apply the project and results to the present academic
conversations taking place. Also, these papers clearly only use formal language
and they usually keep their writing very concise to avoid bubbly or fluffy
writing, hence informal language.
Overall, this genre uses the same
features to display their argument and they keep their papers succinct to avoid
the reader from mentally wandering off. Times New Roman is the usual font used,
MLA or APA formatting is only accepted, and authors use all kinds of mediums to
spread their academic papers, such as in academic journals, actual books, and
etc.
Data
Analysis
First off, the
main objective of the created survey was to measure how college freshmen feel
about using technology being incorporated in their studies, if they feel
comfortable with the vast complications of technology, and other means such as
a preference in either a traditional or online classroom. This was conducted to
find similarities or differences between past studies and my hypothesis for
this survey was for students to be generally more comfortable with using
technology.
In my results, the
first question asks students if technology has aided them in writing courses
and the average score was a solid 4 out of 5. The next question asks if
students feel that their professors aid their college studies and the mean
response was 3.5. Third, students gave an overall 3.75 on their opinion of
traditional classrooms being beneficial. Following this question, a 2.8 was how
students reflected on the ability to develop critical skills with online
courses. However, on the fifth question a 3.85 was the average for students on
whether social interaction is necessary to learn. The sixth question asked if
students were comfortable or able to easily access technology and they
responded with an average of 4.1. Students highly agreed with the seventh
question with a mean of 4.7, which asked if they felt time management was a
huge factor in their academics. Lastly, a 3.7 was given for if students thought
their writing courses involved research topics/papers.
To decipher my results, I cannot
still guarantee a defined answer on my topic, however it does seem that the
students tend to lean in favor of online courses because of its benefits. For
the first question, it clearly exemplified that students are already using some
type of technology for their writing courses, whether it be a pencil or laptop,
these count as forms of technology. This question also shows that students
agree that these tools aid them in their writing classes. The second question
was almost an undecided answer, so it may seem that it truly depends on the
individual student whether they require a professor to learn, yet some prefer
to learn by themselves, therefore leaning towards an online instruction. The
third question gave an overall response roughly above average, showing that
students don’t really have an influence whether they have a traditional or
online class. The fourth question reflected a slightly below average score and
it portrays that the sample group of students felt that critical skills are not
highly stimulated within online communities, thus showing a good amount of
doubt in the rigor of online courses. The fifth question had an overall
agreement that social interaction is crucial for academic advancement, which
ties into a later reference. The sixth question gave a solid reply with students
fairly agreeing that they do have readily access to technology and they are
relatively comfortable enough to manage various means of technology. The
seventh question gave the highest feedback of agreement and it portrayed how
significant a factor that time management is within a college freshmen’s
academic lifestyle. Finally, the eighth question poses the response that
students slightly agree that research is a primary topic within their writing
courses, which relates to the coursework compared to traditional and online
courses.
My data compares to a lot of
previous studies and experiments, which truly supports both their and my
arguments. The second question relates to preceding studies such as one of my
sources, which created an experiment that produced an online environment that
forced a sample group of college freshmen to work only within their own groups.
The only administrative help students were given was technical assistance or
extremely urgent questions with the online guidelines. The results were that
students performed well without the aid of a teacher and students actually
motivate themselves within their groups to work harder (Mongillo, 2009).
Another source created a similar learning module, with the purpose of removing
teachers from the environment and students felt more comfortable to work,
“without the nagging out teachers about coursework” (Leese, 2009).
The fourth question relates to
studies about stimulation of critical thinking such as one example where a
professor conducted various surveys and interviews to find that every 2 out of
4 students felt that critical thinking skills weren’t developed with online
modules while the other 2 felt the other way, which correlates to my data
because the average answer was roughly 3 which is the middle response. Thus, it
seems students cannot truly answer this theory; it would have to be tested
(Rendahl, 2011). However, an actual experiment was administered, by a group of
Education majors, to a sample of first-year transfer foreign college students.
The test consisted of a computer-based program named TANGO, which created 5
units based on vocabulary use, and the results proved that the students’
learning skills greatly increased as did their vocabulary use (Yeh, Yuli,
Hsien-Chin, Liou, 2007).
Also, another source supports the
results matched along with the seventh question. The researcher in this source
also uses an online environment in his experiment to later bring up a theory of
“educational attainment” which has to do with a student’s persistence in study
choice, time management, study efficiency, and GPA. It was resulted that neither an online or
traditional classroom alters one’s attainment, however, it is still reported
that this factor of educational attainment can really make an impact in a
student’s grades. The researcher found it also varies upon person-to-person but
time management does play a crucial role on how a student’s GPA fluctuates
(Meliha Handzic, 2012).
Overall, what my
data adds to this ongoing conversation is that online modules are more
successful but not simply because it is more convenient. This new form of
teaching truly develops social interaction amongst students in a stronger
manner than traditional means; it also subconsciously forces students to become
more independent and more responsible when it comes to academics.
Works Cited
·
Huynh,
M.Q., Umesh, U.N., Valachich, J. (2003). E-Learning as an Emerging
Entrepreneurial Enterprise in Universities and Firms. Communications of the
AIS, 12, 48-68
·
Meliha Handzic, et al. "Do ICT Competences Support
Educational Attainment At
University?." Journal Of Information Technology Education
11.(2012): 1-25. OmniFile Full Text Mega (H.W. Wilson). Web. 28 Sept. 2012.
·
Mongillo, Geraldine1, and Hilary Wilder. "An Examination Of
At-Risk College
Freshmen's Expository Literacy Skills Using Interactive Online
Writing Activities." Journal Of College Reading & Learning 42.2
(2012): 27-50. Education Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 28 Sept. 2012.
·
New
Media Consortium (2007). 2007 Horizon Report, retrieved July 1, 2007 from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2007_Horizon_Report.pdf
·
Rendahl, Merry A. "Moving First-Year Writing Online: Applying
Social Cognitive Theory To An Exploration Of Student Study Habits And
Interactions." Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The
Humanities And Social Sciences 71.7 (2011): 2396. MLA International
Bibliography. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.
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Yeh, Yuli, Hsien-Chin Liou, and Yi-Hsin Li. "Online Synonym
Materials And
Concordancing For EFL College Writing." Computer Assisted
Language Learning 20.2 (2007): 131-152. ERIC. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.
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Young,
K. (2001). The Effective Deployment of e-Learning. Industrial and Commercial
Training, 33 (1), 5-11.
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Zhang,
D., Zhou, L., & Briggs, R.O. (2006). Instructional video in e-learning:
Assessing the impact of interactive video on learning effectiveness.
Information & Management, 43, 15-27.
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