12030s

12030s

Student Presentation (20 minutes)

Hery The, University Of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, hery@hawaii.edu
 * Effectiveness of discussion forum on supporting the learning of Amazon Kindle functionality and usability: Preliminary Results**

The purpose of this mix-method study is to identify effectiveness of the Amazon Kindle Discussion Forum (AKDF) on supporting the learning of Kindle functionality and usability. Kindle in this research is not only limited to the e-reader. Research covers also Kindle’s apps for computer/laptop, as well as apps for mobile devices. Theoretical frameworks applied for this research are content analysis (Gerbner, 1969; Krippendorff, 2004; Rosengren, 1981), discourse analysis (Gee, 2005), philosophical idea of experiences through informal learning (Cross, 2007; Davies, 2008; Dewey, 1998), scaffolding learning with assistance of others (Vygotsky, 1933), and the practice of influence and change (Tharp, 2011).

Technique used to collect data for this research was the observation of discussion posting on AKDF. The observation started out with copied and pasted discussion postings made from September 1 to October 25, 2011 from the discussion forum to Microsoft Words. The started date was chosen based on the nearest month with the design of this project proposal. The end date made on agreement with the Committee of Human Subject University of Hawaii (CHS-UH) grounded with the concept of “existing data” stated in the research exempt application. In order to manage keywords counting, I made a spreadsheet by copied and pasted the same date from Microsoft Word to Microsoft Excel.

Discussants on AKDF are participants in this research. These discussants are also Amazon customers, because they required to login to their Amazon account if they want to make a posting. Conversely, postings in this forum can be read by all the Internet users without login required. In order to control the objectivity of this research, I was doing no intervention to the discussion process. In total 1,025 discussion topics listed on the site when I retrieved data. From these numbers, 73 topics contained discussions from September 1 to October 25, 2011. Data used for analysis were 750 postings fallen to the period determined.

When I designed this project, I anticipated that the number of data were not more that 10% of discussion postings. In fact, the numbers of actual data are larger. Retrieving and organizing data took more time than what I anticipated. Thus, by the due date I can only report preliminary results, because the data analysis is still under process.

Preliminary results of this study showed that with different perspective or approaches of analysis, data can explain lots more information. Therefore, I decided to modify theoretical frameworks used for my study. I will add the multimodal discourse and mediated discourse to the new theoretical frameworks. For the field of Educational Technology, this study will contribute on adding model for doing research about informal learning technology through social media, especially the discussion forum. For participant of this conference, this study will show the process of how a pilot study can sharpen researcher critical thinking and his/her decision on choosing methodology and theoretical framework for his/her study.

All Audiences E-book, Kindle, multimodal analysis, Delta Theory