Social Cognitive Theory The Article

Question: Discuss about the Article for Social Cognitive Theory? Answer: The article, Assessing the effects of interactive blogging on student attitudes towards peer interaction, learning motivation, and academic achievements by C. Yang Y.S. Chang is published in the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. The basic purpose of this article is to explore the role that the uses of blogs have started playing in the education of students along with the ways in which they have started supplementing the traditional classroom lectures, especially in case of higher education. Moreover, the study also chooses to focus on how this difference in the mode of education has lead to the development of student behavior including their attitudes towards their academic achievements, their learning motivation and their attitudes towards their interactions with their peers. The authors here compared two different approaches for the utilization of blogs in classroom studies. While one focuses upon the isolated student writings as part of the portfolio. Wherein the students po st blogs in response to certain prompts so as to make a compilation of what they write. The other method taken into account incorporates peer interactions wherein the students had the facility to respond to their peers post through comments and this facilitated their discussions among each other. There are different study designs that can be utilized for the completion of a successful research. For this research, the researchers made use of the exploratory design with quasi experimental facets. It means that the researchers will choose to include features of a true experiment but here certain of the elements may be missing. The most important reason for the utilization of this design lies in the fact that because it is considered to be a true replacement for original experiments along with the fact that it is not very practical to make use of a random sample study when considering the importance of blogs on learning and behavioral aptitudes. However, as much as a quasi experimental research cannot illustrate the cause and effect of the relationship between the subject and the object like in a controlled experiment, however, the cause and effects of the relation of the two can be effectively inferred from the gathered data. For the purpose of this research, the researchers hav e made use of case studies and correlation research by making use of two blogs. When it comes to researches concerning human growth and development, correlational research and case studies are often useful. However the studies need to be conducted carefully in a manner where the data retains its validity. Validity here is the measure of the success rate of what the study was initially supposed to uncover. There are several different factors that are being studied throughout the research. Firstly, the researchers want to study how important can blogs be when it comes to bringing about a revolution in higher education especially when it comes to student interaction. The other variables include the importance of motivation in learning, the attitude of the students towards their peers and its overall impact upon their academic achievements. The researchers in their study have pointed out that some of the reasons because of which blogs have becomes so important in the educational sectors is because they have become digital portfolios when it comes to the students assignments as well as their achievements. This is because blogs are platforms that provide students with a personal writing space. Moreover these are easy to publish, are sharable, and most importantly, they can be automatically archived, which empowers users to form learning communities with the help of these inter-linkages, the writers point out that this is the main reason because of which blogs have been successful in combining the process of learning with peer interaction. The research rightly points out that the general awareness of blogs exists in advanced education, also, a few students and personnel might even have kept up personal blogs for a considerable length of time in noneducational settings. Be that as it may, when it comes to the use of blogs in educational situations, there doesnt remain a comparable level of force as those in noneducational use. A few researchers like Hall and Davison 2007 contend that the basic comprehension of how to utilize social media, for example, like the use of discussion forums and blogs in a viable and significant way is minimal. The issue somewhat rests without more cohesive data to survey quality and adequacy. More cases for inducing blogging in educational settings need to concentrate on a far reaching research base comprehensively upheld by valid empirical studies directed in the structure of educational theory. When it comes to the aspect of hypothesis testing, the researchers have made use of theoretical knowledge that has been gathered with the help of secondary data from different researches. The researchers used vrooms expectancy theory as a framework for the purpose of exploring factors that will motivate the students to contribute as well as collaborate in an online learning environment. This is useful since the theory of vroom takes into account certain dimensions like expectancy, valence and instrumentality when it investigates the choice that people make and it is important to implement the same when analyzing the answers that the students provide in the questions present in the questionnaire that is being used to gather the data regarding the value of using blogs as an advanced educational tool. It also takes into account the social modeling process that has been developed by Bandura (1986) when it comes to defining the interactions present in between students, these interaction p resents opportunities for watching and impersonating effective practices and accomplishments, which basically brings about changes in peer levels of skill in an undertaking. Peer learning is a type of cooperative learning that helps in upgrading the and results in different beneficial learning outcomes. By opening opportunities for peers to view blogs made by others and empowering remarks and recommendations subsequent to analyzing their perspectives, exemplars are displayed for perceptions also, displaying, which, in the light of social learning theory by Bandura (1986), ought to upgrade spectator learning levels in an undertaking. Subsequently, course subjects reflected in intelligent blog discussion, dialogs, and remarks might improve scholarly accomplishments. As stated previously, the study takes into consideration two different groups and two types of blogs. One is as independent blog and the other is interactive. Both groups demonstrated that they were very motivated when it came to learning with the help of peer interactions through blogs. The researchers rightly state that basic reflection not just confers intending to what has been depicted, but additionally adds profundity and expansiveness to the implications by making inquiries about, and relating implications to, a range of learning issues. The researchers found that 61% of the remarks were intelligent. The study results reported for student states of mind towards peer interaction, learning motivation, and scholastic accomplishments are restricted for a few reasons. The limitations of the study as found in the study are as under. Initially, the learning connection was barely characterized, concentrating on learning a specialized, system based subject, to be specific, Electronic Commerce and Design of Internet Applications. An arrangement that incorporates examinations of blog use in different trains, for example, Business Administration and Women's Studies would be more exhaustive. Secondly, blogging went about as a supplement to a customary course, both with as well as outside the school curriculum. The estimation of the blog for learning and peer support in the different learning settings ought to be explored in a different study. Thirdly, in spite of the fact that student mentalities towards learning motivation, peer interaction, and scholastic accomplishments have been examined, a more thorough investigation with more measurements, like subjective view of reflection, towards the differences of the empirical discoveries would be intriguing. Fourthly, the researchers conducted the research with the intention of studying student behavior for two semesters which limited the findings as compared to the data that could have been collected over many semesters comprising of different student groups. Fifth, this study did not address any concerns about shared learning stages when it came to plagiarism. A very tedious aspect of social learning is that it is too widely available to a multitude of readers which increases its potential for copyright infringement under the mask of peer learning. In the event that this is a difficult issue in blogs, the question remains regarding the choice of correct methodologies that can be used to address the issue. The ramification of utilizing blogs to address the act of plagiarism requires further research. The essential informati on in the research was gathered between fall 2006 and spring of 2007. From that point forward, Web 2.0 incorporates a few new applications that empower self-assertive subsets of clients to speak with one another. Such correspondence progressively happens on Facebook, as well as on a few littler system applications, for example, Twitter. While blogs are more of a solitary unit, Twitter and Facebook are inherently considered to be more social. The researchers found that the students who utilized Facebook had a considerably higher sense of self-divulgence. They were also considerably more motivated and showed a positive attitude and zeal of learning in a classroom atmosphere. When it comes to education and twitter, it may be stated that it was found to be more of an interactive platform that facilitated interactions and exchange of information in a large scale. Twitter clients with comparative aims associate and team up with one another while looking for or sharing data. The research o utcomes, consolidated with the proliferation of social networking software, recommend that future advancement of educational instruments ought to be more attentive when it comes to the use of social network. In conclusion it may be stated that this study focused on the assessment and implementations of blogging in higher education. The authors made a comparative study of two different kind of blogs and their usages in the classroom scenario. The study results found that the method where the focus was upon students using the blog as their writing portfolio in responses to certain prompts had limitations, since it did not facilitate he one to one interactions among students and they did not receive feedback on different chain of thoughts. The other method made use of peer interactions and here the students had the facility to respond on the posts of each other and this facilitated them to hold in-depth discussion regarding the topic and it also facilitated them to pick up subtopics and discuss them in length which often helped in information sharing, learning and provided further topics to write about. The researchers found that when students did find the opportunity to interact with one a nother, as opposed to the isolated blogs that were only used as portfolios, the reports towards the key aspects of the research like peer interaction, learning motivation, and academic achievements shows a positive response. The interactions of the students among each other also helped in the process of motivating students to learn from the interactions and this in turn further facilitated them to indulge in academic success. Peer work thus proved to be a positive source of student motivation. Thus the peer feedback does appear to create quite a virtuous cycle and this provides valuable information while at the same time it helps in the process of improving the attitudes that students have towards using blogging as a source of learning. Thus when it comes to higher education and the use of blogging, this research has demonstrated that blogging has several positive effects on the process of learning other than improving collaboration among students and it can be recommended as a lear ning tool because it facilitates the aspects of reflection, communication, collaborative learning and provides social support. References Bandura A. (1986) Social Cognitive Theory. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, NewYork. Hall H. Davison B. (2007) Social software as support in hybrid learning environments: the value of the blog as a tool for reflective learning and peer support. Library Information Science Research 29, 163187. Yang S.H. (2009) Using blogs to enhance critical reflection and community of practice. Educational Technology Society 12, 1121 Yang, C., Chang, Y. S. (2012). Assessing the effects of interactive blogging on student attitudes towards peer interaction, learning motivation, and academic achievements.Journal of Computer Assisted Learning,28(2), 126-135.