Psychol Stud (October–December 2014) 59(4):401–407 DOI 10.1007/s12646-014-0281-7
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
Personality and Facebook Usage as Predictors of Student Participation in Course Blogs Vipanchi Mishra & Katie Niblock & Carol Shansky
Received: 11 July 2014 / Accepted: 29 September 2014 / Published online: 7 November 2014 # National Academy of Psychology (NAOP) India 2014
Abstract The use of social media for educational purposes has increased in the past few years. While the use of Facebook and Twitter has been extensively researched, research on the use of blogs in educational contexts has been limited. Course blogs are maintained by the instructor and used as tools to encourage participation, but every student does not participate in these blogs. The current study was an exploratory investigation of the factors that influence students’ participation in courserelated blogs. Students enrolled in undergraduate music courses were given the option to create or respond to weekly blog postings by the instructor across two semesters. At the end of each semester, students completed a survey regarding their reactions to the usage of course blog as a participation tool. Findings indicated that conscientiousness and average time spent on Facebook significantly predicted student participation in course blogs. No significant relationships were observed between extroversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism and course blog participation.
Earlier version of this paper was presented at the 122nd annual conference of the American Psychological Association, August 2014, Washington D.C. V. Mishra (*) Department of Psychology, West Chester University of Pennsylvania, 700 South High St, West Chester, PA 19383, USA e-mail:
[email protected] K. Niblock School of Management, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, New York, USA C. Shansky Department of Fine and Performing Arts, Iona College, New York, USA
Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed. Keywords Personality traits . Blogging . Student participation . Course blogs . Social media
The popularization of social media in today’s world has increased the use of blogs in educational contexts (Kim 2008; Lin et al. 2006). A blog can be defined as a regularly updated and personalized web page that contains entries dated in reverse chronological order (Herring et al. 2005). The use of blogs in classroom settings enables a community of student bloggers to create an interactive social learning environment where they can learn from the ideas of others, share knowledge resources, and compare/compete with each other’s work (Du and Wagner 2007). Because of these potential advantages associated with the use of blogging, many educators have attempted to implement blogs in educational settings to enhance the communication environment among students and teachers (Kim 2008). In spite of the availability of blog platforms, some students may not engage in blogging at all. Recent research in this area has begun to investigate individual difference variables that may predict students’ blogging behavior. For example, personality traits of conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion have been found to predict perceived enjoyment in blogging which influences blogging intention (Wang et al. 2012). While this research has been conducted in reference to students’ attitudes and intentions towards blogging, no previous research has investigated the factors that influence students’ participation in course-related blogs in a classroom context. The present study is an exploratory investigation into the factors that influence student participation in course-related blogs.
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Antecedents of Student Participation in Course Blogs The use of blogs in educational contexts has increased in recent years because of the potential benefits associated with blogging. For example, Maag (2005) suggests that course blogs help students to share their learning experiences and express their thoughts to the teacher and peers. Coutinho (2007) mentions that blogging offers students the opportunity to discuss thoughts, ideas and opinions in a social plan, enabling the social construction of knowledge. According to Herrington and Oliver (2000), educational use of blogs can support and improve highly effective types of learner-tolearner interactions. These advantages of blogging in educational contexts can be explained from Vygotsky’s social constructivist perspective. According to Vygotsky, learning is derived from rich conversation with other persons who have similar or different perspectives based on their own life experiences (Jonassen 1999; Woo and Reeves 2007). Thus, blogging can also be conceived of as a behavior of social knowledge construction, where the use of blogs in online educational settings can help enhance students’ knowledge sharing and learning effectiveness (Coutinho 2007). However, not all students participate in blog platforms. Recent research on blogging has indicated that certain individual difference variables may influence blogging behavior. For example, in the context of blogging, perceived enjoyment has been found to be a salient predictor of behavioral intention to use blogs (Wang et al. 2012). Similarly, Hsu and Lin (2008) contend that individuals may not participate in blogging due to the effort required to maintain an active blog. This implies that individual differences and/or personality traits may also influence student participation in course blogs. Within the field of information technology, a large body of research has focused on investigating the influence of personality traits on acceptance of technological tools (e.g., Agarwal and Prasad 1998; Guadagno et al. 2008). Personality can be conceptualized as the entire mental organization of a person’s traits, where traits are defined as cross situational and temporally stable set of individual attributes (McCrae and Costa 1999). According to Costa and McCrae (1992) personality can be described across five major dimensions, which include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Extraversion refers to the extent to which an individual is sociable, talkative, gregarious, assertive, and active. Agreeableness refers to the extent to which a person is cooperative, good-natured, forgiving, softhearted, trusting, and tolerant (Barrick and Mount 1991). Individuals high on conscientiousness are organized, efficient, thorough, reliable, and achievement-oriented (Costa and McCrae 1992). Neuroticism encompasses traits such as high anxiety, depression, anger, and embarrassment (Barrick and Mount 1991). Finally, openness to experience refers to the extent to which a person is imaginative, cultured, original, broadminded,
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creative and artistic (Barrick and Mount 1991; Costa and McCrae 1992). Much of the research on blogging has indicated that personality characteristics predict blogging behavior. For example, Wang et al. (2012) found that extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness influenced perceived enjoyment in blogging, which predicted participants’ intention to blog. Similarly, Guadagno et al. (2008) found that high scores on neuroticism and openness to experience predicted blogging. Wang and Li (2011) found that conscientiousness and openness to experience predicted blogging behaviors of undergraduate students. Research has also indicated that students high in openness to experience generally maintain a positive mood about new learning experiences (Schniederjans and Kim 2005). However, none of this research has explored the influence of personality characteristics on student participation in course-related blogs. Course-related blogs are different than maintaining one’s personal blog as they are based on courserelated content and are managed by the instructor as opposed to the students themselves. Instructors may use these blogs as a tool to encourage class participation with the option of making participation a formal requirement for the course. Furthermore, research on the effects of personality on class participation has indicated that conscientiousness and agreeableness significantly predicted students’ adaptability in school settings, which further predicted class participation (Martin et al. 2013). Similarly, individuals high on self-efficacy, persistence, control and planning have been found to be more likely to engage in class participation activities (Martin and Marsh 2006). In another study, Caspi et al. (2006) found that students who were high on openness to experience, extraversion and emotional stability were more likely to engage in social participation in the classroom. Taken together, these findings indicate that personality traits predict students’ blogging behavior as well as their participation in classroom activities. Considering course blog participation as a form of class participation activity, it may be possible that similar effects would be observed in course blog contexts. For example, because conscientious individuals are achievement oriented, they may be more likely to take responsibility for their learning and participate in blog discussions. On the other hand, because blogging represents a relatively new approach to higher education, we predict that students high in openness to experience would be more likely to participate in course-related blogs. Similarly, because agreeable individuals tend to be pleasant and cooperative, and have been found to be more open to collaborative approaches to learning (De Raad and Schouwenburg 1996); we predict that agreeableness would be positively related with participation in course blogs. Finally, because extroverts strive to be the focus of attention in group settings, are often talkative, and desire social interaction, they may view course blogs as an opportunity to enhance social relationships and perceive online
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blogging as a medium of communication with the instructor and fellow classmates. Given that neurotic individuals are prone to perceptions of stress and anxiety, they might find the ambiguity and uncertainty that can be associated with online blogging unappealing (Schniederjans and Kim 2005). However, while higher levels of neuroticism have been associated with general blogging behavior (Guadagno et al. 2008), low levels of neuroticism have been found to predict student participation (Martin et al. 2013). Given the counterintuitive findings, we do not predict an explicit relationship between neuroticism and course blog participation. Research Question 1: Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extraversion and Openness to experience will predict course blog participation. In addition to personality variables, the frequency of social media usage may also be a predictor of student participation in course blogs. With the increase in social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google plus, etc. students are now connected to the Internet around the clock. Among these, the most popular social media website for college students is Facebook, and research shows that anywhere between 85 and 99 % of college students use Facebook (Jones and Fox 2009; Matney and Borland 2009). College students use the site in diverse ways to perform a wide range of social tasks (i.e. keeping in touch with friends, coordinating social events, etc.). Prior research has shown that Facebook usage is related to student engagement in co-curricular activities (Junco 2012). For example, Heiberger and Harper (2008) and a study conducted by Higher Education Research Institute (2007) found positive correlations between social networking website use and college student engagement. Specifically, their findings indicated that high-frequency users of social networking websites participated in and spent more time in campus organizations than low-frequency users. These findings imply that higher frequency of Facebook usage may be positively related to social network interaction among students. Considering course blogs as a medium of social networking, it may be possible that increased use of Facebook may also influence students’ participation in course-related blogs. Further, it may also be possible that frequent social media usage may develop their technological skills such as increase their familiarity and comfort with web based tools such as course-related blogs, as a result they may be more likely to participate in course blogs. On the other hand, it can be argued that frequent use of social media may have negative influence on blog participation, i.e. individuals who spend more time on social media such as Facebook, may not participate in blog discussions related to coursework, as they might be more interested in social networking. Thus, we propose:
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Research Question 2: What is the relationship between average time spent on Facebook and course blog participation?
Method Participants Participants consisted of 105 students at a small northeastern college in the United States. A large majority of the participants belonged to the age group of 21–24 years, 48.6 % of the participants were men and 48.6 % were women, and 1 % identified themselves in the other category. Participant race varied, 73.3 % of the participants were Caucasian, 6.7 % were African American, 12.4 % were Latino and 6.7 % identified themselves in the other category (two participants’ did not respond to demographic questions). Measures Course Blog Participation Two items were used to measure blog participation. Participants responded to the following question “How often have you done the following on WordPress/Posterous over the semester”; the first item asked “Posted a comment to WordPress/Posterous” and the second item asked “Read a post on WordPress/Posterous.” Response options varied from 1=Never to 5=Once or twice per week. Facebook Usage A single item was used to measure Facebook usage. “On an average, how much time do you spend on Facebook per day?” Response options varied from 1=0–30 to 4=90 min or above. Personality Personality traits were measured using the ten item measure developed by Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann Jr. (2003). Each of the five personality traits were measured by two items. The items varied on a 7 point Likert scale from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 7 = Strongly Agree (Cronbach alpha=.60). Reliabilities for each of the personality dimensions are presented in Table 1. Procedure This exploratory study surveyed students enrolled in undergraduate courses in the music program at a small northeastern college in the United States. In order to encourage student participation in the course, the instructor created a blogging platform, which included weekly blog postings related to the course material covered in class as well as topics relating to the music industry in general. Students were asked to participate by responding to instructor posts as well as creating their
404 Table 1 Inter-correlations between Study Variables
N=105. Reliability of personality measures are presented across the diagonal * p<.05, ** p<.01
Psychol Stud (October–December 2014) 59(4):401–407
Variables
Mean
SD
1
2
3
4
Posted Comments on Blog Read Blog posts Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness
1.56 2.63 4.52 4.99 5.73
.93 1.27 1.32 1.01 1.13
– .53** −.05 −.10 .18
– −.12 .03 .20*
(.58) .15 .11
(.37) .03
(.50)
Emotional Stability Openness to Experience Facebook Usage
5.49 5.51 1.60
1.14 1.09 .96
.01 −.12 .23*
.11 −.12 .14
.26** .35** .14
.15 .12 −.00
.28** −.15 −.04
own posts on the blog prior to the next class meeting. This was an optional exercise for the students and they were not required to participate in the course blog, but were encouraged to participate by the instructor. During the last week of classes, students were given a short survey regarding their experience with the use of blogging website as a class participation tool. It should be noted that Posterous was the blogging platform used in the Fall, 2012 semester and WordPress was used in the Spring 2013 semester as Posterous was discontinued in February 2013. Both blogs operate similarly in that a private blog can be created where the members must be invited to participate, thus creating a secure environment for discussion. In addition, these platforms send a blog posting directly to members via email so that the students do not have to log in to the course website (Blackboard) or receive an announcement from the instructor. Thus, the students received emails whenever there was a new posting and could respond accordingly.
5
6
7
8
(.37) .23* .02
(.21) .08
–
independent variables and reading comments on the course blog as the dependent variable. Results indicated that after controlling for demographic variables, together personality traits and average time spent on Facebook accounted for 19 % variance in the dependent variable. Even though the overall model was not significant (F (12, 97)=1.75, n.s.), conscientiousness (β=.28, t=2.51, p<.05) and average time spent on Facebook (β=.24, t=2.36, p<.05) significantly predicted posting comments on the course blog. Regression coefficients and R2 statistics are presented in Table 2. These results indicate that hypothesis 1 regarding the effects of personality traits on blog participation was partially supported. In addition, a positive relationship between average time spent on Facebook and course blog participation was also observed.
Discussion
Results Means, standard deviations and inter-correlations among study variables are presented in Table 1. Two separate hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test the study hypotheses. The first regression analysis was conducted with personality traits and average time spent on Facebook as independent variables and posting comments on the course blog as the dependent variable. Demographic variables such as gender, age, and ethnicity were entered in the first step of the analyses as control variables. Results indicated that after controlling for demographic variables, together personality traits and average time spent on Facebook accounted for 19.8 % variance in the dependent variable. Even though the overall regression model was not significant (F (12, 96)=1.73, n.s.), conscientiousness (β=.26, t=2.28, p<.05) and average time spent on Facebook (β=.30, t=2.88, p<.01) significantly predicted posting comments on the course blog. The second set of regression analyses was conducted with personality traits and average time spent on Facebook as
The purpose of this study was to explore the influence of the big five personality traits and Facebook usage on student participation in course blogs. Results indicate that conscientiousness and average time spent on Facebook were significant predictors of student participation in the course blog. No prior research has explored the antecedents of students’ course blog participation and the findings from this exploratory study give some indication that personality traits and social media usage may influence students’ tendency to participate in course-related blogs. The finding that conscientiousness was a significant predictor of course blog participation is not surprising, as conscientiousness has been found to predict academic performance (Poropat 2009) as well as job performance (Barrick and Mount 1991; Hogan and Holland 2003). For example, conscientiousness has been to shown to be a predictor of academic motivation and academic achievement in traditional class settings (Komarraju et al. 2011) as well as online settings (Schniederjans and Kim 2005). Thus, it may be that even though blog participation was not a requirement for this course, conscientious students may have participated in the blog because of their tendency to strive for success. On the
Psychol Stud (October–December 2014) 59(4):401–407 Table 2 Summary of Hierarchical Multiple Regression Analysis for Variables Predicting Course Blog Participation (N=105)
Variables
405
Posted Comments to the Blog
Read Comments on the Blog
β
R2
ΔR2
β
R2
ΔR2
−.01 .12 .07 −.19 −.11 .01
.07
.07
−.03 −.03 −.02 −.21 −.16 −.07
.06
.06
−.07 .26* −.09 .01 .01 .30**
.20
.13
−.14 .28* .00 .01 .12 .24**
.19
.14
Step1
* p<.05, ** p<.01, *** p<.001
Male Age Caucasian African American Other English Step 2 Extraversion Conscientiousness Agreeableness Openness to Experience Emotional Stability Time Spent on Facebook
other hand, no significant relationships between extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness, and blog participation were obtained. This is contrary to the findings observed with respect to general blogging behavior (Guadagno et al. 2008; Wang and Li 2011). Moreover, these factors were negatively correlated with reading and posting comments on the course blog. While there is no research to suggest why this may be the case, one reason for these findings could be attributed to the fact that blog participation was voluntary and not a requirement for the course. Because blogging is an independent activity with little opportunity for social activity or face-toface interaction, it may be possible that extraverts may have found this inability to fulfill their desire for social interaction and lack of incentive unappealing. Students high on openness to experience on the other hand may have used the blog a few times but may not have consistently participated since it did not affect their course grade. Similarly, even though agreeable individuals tend to be pleasant and cooperative, the lack of face-to-face interaction may have influenced their ability to participate on the blog. With respect to the significant findings regarding the positive relationship between Facebook usage and blog participation, our results draw attention to the potential benefits of student exposure to social media. It may be that increased familiarity with the social networking website may have facilitated course blog participation among these students, thus implying that students who already spend significant time on social media might be more interested in adoption of similar technologies (e.g., course blogs) for class use. Our exploratory findings also indicate that course blogs are not for everyone, depending on their personality and familiarity with social media, students may be more or less likely to participate in
course-related blogs. Even though blog participation was optional, our results indicate that approximately 21.9 % students posted and approximately 39 % students read a posting on the blog once or twice per week. Thus suggesting that instructors could use course blogs to generate discussion outside of the classroom and students’ blog postings could also be used to initiate in-class discussions. Hence, educators should encourage the use of such technologies to facilitate student learning. However, given the small sample size, our results should be interpreted with caution. Limitations and Future Directions As with all research, there were several limitations to this study that should be noted. First, the current study had a small sample size, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. The study should be replicated with a larger sample of students and perhaps data should be collected across several semesters. Secondly, reliance on self-report measures of Facebook usage and blog participation may have resulted in inflated observed relationships among variables. Future research should include more objective data such as the number of times blog entries were posted and read by the participant. Similarly, the use of a monitoring application to track the exact amount of time spent each day on Facebook would provide a better estimate of students’ social media usage. Third, the personality measure used in the current study had low reliability. Given this was an exploratory study; we used this measure in favor of parsimony. Future researchers should use more comprehensive measures of personality as well as collect students’ actual course grades to determine whether blog participation influences students’ academic performance.
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In addition, researchers should look at perceived ease of use of blogging platforms as well as perceived usefulness as mediators of the relationship between personality traits and student participation in course blogs. Furthermore, researchers could also compare student participation in course blogs, when it is optional vs. required by the instructor. It may be that the rate of participation would be higher when blog participation is a requirement of the course as compared to when participation is optional. Furthermore, in the current study, the students were not music majors and the classes included in this study were required for the students’ general education core. Thus, their personal stake in the course was possibly less than that for a course in their major. Future researchers may want to see the difference in students’ blog participation in courses populated by non-majors in comparison to similar courses populated by music majors. The reason for allowing voluntary blog participation rather than required in the current study was to see if students demonstrated a desire for social networks to be used as a classroom tool. In accordance with previous literature (e.g., Du and Wagner 2007, Kim 2008) our preliminary findings suggest that this may be the case and that student’s personality traits may play an important role in predicting their participation in course blogs. In addition, cultural context may also influence student blogging behavior; even though not much cross-cultural research has been done on student participation in course blogs, the limited research on general blogging behavior suggests that there may be differences in the type of information shared by bloggers in individualistic vs. collectivistic cultures. For example, recent research on general blogging behavior in Taiwan, which is a collectivistic culture, has shown that Taiwanese bloggers revealed less personal information as compared to American bloggers (Chen 2010). More specifically, the findings indicated that when it came to self-presentation in blogs, Taiwanese bloggers paid closer attention to their social relations, but refrained from revealing personal details; they also used more self-promotion strategies by showcasing their intellectuality. American bloggers, on the other hand, tended to dwell less on their relations, but were more open about themselves in their blog posts. In another study, Downes (2004) found that students in an elementary school in Quebec City were as involved and enthusiastic about a class blog as were high school students in New Jersey. Thus, it may be possible that students may have positive perceptions of the use of course blogs in both individualistic and collectivistic cultures, however the degree of participation and the type of information shared by students may differ across cultures. Further research on the influence of cultural values and dispositional factors such as self-control might provide a more comprehensive assessment of student reactions to course blogs as class participation tools.
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