Investigating the role of identity and gender in technology mediated learning

Abstract

Instructors and trainers are increasingly using online education and technology-mediated learning (TML) to supplement or replace traditional approaches to classroom teaching. Because mandatory involvement requirements may not intrinsically motivate learners to achieve high quality learning, social factors with commitment, such as identification among group members, are especially important determinants of TML success. This article investigates an individual's social and self identities as important determinants in developing affective commitment (identification) and intrinsic motivation (perceived enjoyment) to share knowledge by email in the TML environment. Furthermore, given the recent emphasis on gender in system adoption and socio-linguistic literature, this study investigates gender as a moderating variable in the proposed model. An empirical test of the proposed model was conducted in the pilot test (n = 155) as well as the main test (n = 411). Social and self identities influence identification (R ² = 0.42) and perceived enjoyment (R ² = 0.52) of sharing knowledge by email. As expected, there are significant moderating effects of gender in these relationships in that male shows stronger effects of self identity while female shows stronger effects of social identity. The results of this study will help us understand the antecedents of effective knowledge sharing intervention in the TML environment, based on the integrated model of social identity theory, social influence theory, self determination theory and socio-linguistic literature.

Keywords:

• technology-mediated learning
• knowledge sharing
• identity
• gender
• enjoyment

Notes

1. In this study, knowledge sharing in the TML environment should be interpreted as a voluntary system because the learners can freely choose the communication media, such as group email function of Blackboard, telephone or face-to-face discussion, and there is no instructor's intervention in this knowledge sharing process. Although the students in the study are provided with the group email system in Blackboard, they can also use the alternative communication media in the classroom or home, making email usage for knowledge sharing voluntary.

2. We included only identification as an affective commitment variable in the model, because this study focuses on identification and identities, suggesting that the internalised behaviour is outside the main research question of this study. Most TML functions are also related to group interaction rather than internalisation, which supports our focus on identification as an affective commitment. Future study can investigate the internalisation dimension in affective commitment to make our knowledge more complete.

3. One of the group projects was a structured interview with IT experts in the field regarding IS job market issues and a recently completed IS project management engagement. Group members were required to complete the group's work, such as interviewing, preparing an interview protocol, reporting and presenting, and to participate in the project via group emails, telephone, and face-to-face discussion in class. The second group project was a database development project using MS Access. Each group was required to develop a CD management database using seven tables and relationships in MS Access. Overall database structure was to be decided based on the discussion of group members.

4. Please see the details of this procedure in Keil et al. (2000).

5. We appreciate this comment by the anonymous reviewer.