دانلود رایگان مقاله اتخاذ زندگی دوم در آموزش: مدل انگیزشی بر اساس استفاده و نظریه لذت

Abstract

Social Virtual Worlds (SVWs) are increasingly being used in education; however, little is known about how personal motivation affects engagement in online learning courses (e-learning). This article focuses on Second Life which is one of the better known SVW platforms and allows relationships to develop amongst people who share similar interests and/or activities The aims of this study are twofold: (1) to analyse the motivation of Second Life users with regard to e-learning; and (2) to propose a model that explains and predicts the adoption of Second Life in this context. This model has been defined under the postulates of the Uses and Gratification theory (Blumler & Katz, 1974; Swanson, 1987) which comprises the seven constructs of convenience, entertainment, socialising, status seeking, information seeking, sharing experience, and continuance intention. A web-based survey is reported. Findings confirm the positive influence of convenience, sharing experiences, and entertainment on the intention to continue to use Second Life e-learning, and the positive impact of status, and information seeking on sharing experiences. Implications of this study are considered under the three categories of academic, managerial, and technological perspectives.

6. Conclusions

Analysing the main gratifications for using new media technologies is an interesting topic. However, little research has tested the intention to use Second Life, and more specifically, none have been found which looked at training and education. This study has been an attempt to rectify this. In order to investigate the factors that influence successful continuance intention of Second Life in e-learning processes, this study extended the Uses and Gratifications framework, and demonstrated the impact of gratifications on users’ intention to use the program. The findings provide useful data for clarifying which are the most relevant motivations for using Second Life in education. Overall, our analysis clearly confirms the importance of some gratifications in the use of Second Life such as convenience, entertainment and sharing experience. It was found that the intended use of a SVW in our study is much higher than results achieved in similar studies. We believe that these results are due to the direct and positive influence that the selected constructs have in acceptance and adoption. In this sense, educational institutions can benefit from the findings, and design more suitable educational programmes in order to draw in new students and to increase their Internet presence. Forthcoming studies should consider adding additional factors in order to improve the empirical reliability and validity of the model. Finally, this study indicated the utility of using Second Life instructor-student and student-student interactions. More work on this phenomenon will help us to determine more about the advantages and disadvantages of Second Life in the implementation of new programmes.