Texts and Technologies: Entry #3

The Role of Perceived User-interface Design in Continued Usage Intention of Self-paced e-Learning Tools

Cho, V., Cheng, T.C.E., & Lei, W.M.J. (2009). The role of perceived user-interface design in continued usage intention of self-paced e-learning tools. Computers and Education 53: 216-227. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2009.01.014

In this quantitative study, Cho, Cheng, and Lei investigate the impact of perceived user-interface design (PUID) on the perceived usefulness (PU) of e-learning technologies in order to predict the continued usage intention (CUI). 

Situating their study in the field of Human Computer Interactions (HCI), Cho, Cheng, and Lei identify the importance of understanding user-interface design (UID) to contribute to the still-maturing field of HCI. Defining interface as “a point of contact that enables interaction between user and system” (p. 216), they argue the importance of understanding how effective UID can facilitate HCI. 

Through a literature review, Cho, Cheng, and Lei establish a need for generalized research on PUID. The majority of current research, they illustrate, has focused primarily on case studies of particular interface designs and techniques using an experimental approach to gauge user reactions. Only a small percentage of studies have conducted extensive surveys and described the more general influence of PUID on information technology systems.

To address the need for a more generalized description of the impact of PUID on CUI, they focus on e-learning technologies because of the importance of interface design in education. Good user interface design, they argue, can increase motivation by providing control while poor design impairs students’ overall motivation (p. 217). As a result, the quality of education software is directly related to the quality of the interface (p. 217).

To assess the impact of PUID on CUI, Cho, Cheng, and Lei designed a 27-item survey to test a series of hypotheses: 

H1: Perceived user-interface design has a positive effect on perceived usefulness

H2: Perceived functionality mediates the impact of perceived user-interface design on perceived usefulness

H3: Perceived user-interface design as a positive effect on perceived ease of use

H4: Perceived system support mediates the impact of user-interface design on perceived ease of use

H5: Perceived ease of use has a positive effect on perceived usefulness

H6: Perceived usefulness has a positive effect on continued usage intention

H7: User satisfaction has a positive effect on continued usage intention.

Cho, Cheng, and Lei surveyed a random sample of 100 Hong Kong university students using a 27-item questionnaire to assess PUID (perceived user-interface design), PSS (perceived system support), PF (perceived functionality), PEOU (perceived ease of use), PU (perceived usefulness), USat (user satisfaction), and CUI (continued usage intention). Responders rated their satisfaction with e-learning technologies and continued usage intention above 3.0 (on a 5-point Likert scale), indicating a positive overall user satisfaction rating.

Using correlational and regression statistical analyses, Cho, Cheng, and Lei found statistically significant correlations to support each of the seven hypotheses. They conclude that their findings corroborate with previous findings on the influential role of perceived user-interface design on continued use of technology. Additionally, this influential relationship is not direct—rather it is mediated by perceived functionality and perceived system support while perceived usefulness and user satisfaction serve as indicators for continued use.

This study offers an additional approach to considering user interface design and usability. In class, we have focused on the graphic and rhetorical nature of interface design. This study helps to further our understanding of the complexity of the relationship, especially in light of our focus on interactivity as described by Porter, Carnegie, and Bolter and Grusin.

This study also contributes to my research on Blackboard. While this study targets the perceived user-interface design and continued usage of self-paced e-learning technologies, the findings are applicable to my understanding of how Blackboard’s design encourages or discourages participation. Additionally, it provides another approach for analysis as well as a language for discussing the interactions and design of Blackboard.

Texts and Technologies: Entry #2 (Redo)

 Effective uses for Blackboard: Do Students and Faculty have a Shared Vision for how Blackboard should be used to Support Instruction?

Sutton, S. R., McCoy, S., & Pfaffman, J. Effective uses for Blackboard: Do students and faculty have a shared vision for how Blackboard should be used to support instruction? In D. Gibson & B. Dodge (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2010 (pp. 3361-3366). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Retrieved November 8, 2013 from http://www.editlib.org/p/33894

In this conference paper, Sutton, McCoy, and Pfaffman present the results of a mixed-methods study on student perceptions of the effectiveness of Blackboard on their learning. Beginning with a focus group of five students, the researchers developed and piloted a survey that combined both Likert-scale items and open-ended questions to answer two primary research questions: 

1) What faculty uses of Blackboard do students value as the most effective/least effective in enhancing their learning?

2) From a student’s perspective, which uses of Blackboard are helpful and which are bothersome? (p. 3362).

The final version of the survey was administered to 8,000 undergraduate students at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville of which 1109 students (14%) responded.

The survey consisted of six sections: demographic information, features rating, helpful uses of Blackboard, not helpful uses of Blackboard, use of the Discussion Board, use of Blackboard vs. non-use of Blackboad. The combination of Likert-scale items and open-ended questions allowed researchers to corroborate the ratings of the features with students’ more detailed responses.

Sutton, McCoy, and Pfaffman found that the students value access to information as the primary feature of Blackboard. Students indicated access to grades, course documents, course notes, and course announcements as the most helpful features of the course management system. Likewise, they preferred faculty use of these features to be timely and proactive—specifically, they distinguished between faculty who posted course notes and announcements with sufficient time for access and review and those who posted course notes and announcements right before or after class. Overall, Sutton, McCoy, and Pfaffman found that “students liked professors who used Blackboard, were cognizant of students’ time, and posted promptly, consistently, and in a timely fashion” (p. 3365).

As a result of focus group discussions, the survey featured a section on the Discussion Board feature of Blackboard and responses to the use of forums were varied. The results indicate that students’ value of Blackboard discussions were dependent on faculty’s use of the feature. Students found discussions less helpful when they were perceived as busy work, redundant to class discussions, and ignored by faculty. Conversely, students found discussions more helpful when they were structured as introductions to or extensions of in-class discussions and when faculty were heavily involved in moderating the discussions.

While not directly related to our class discussions, this study does offer a unique perspective on user perception of a practical interface design that, in fact, ignores the design. By surveying Blackboard’s secondary audience of students, Sutton, McCoy, and Pfaffman evaluate the primary audience’s (instructors’) ability to effectively use the interface to enhance learning. Realizing that many faculty do not use Blackboard despite students’ preference for it, especially for timely access to course materials, raises questions about access and accessibility for both students and faculty.

Unlike other studies that focus on faculty’s perceptions, likes, and dislikes of Blackboard, this study’s focus on students indicates that students’ feelings toward Blackboard are dependent on the faculty’s ability to take advantage of the affordances of the software. This information is helpful for my own research in that it confirms that students view Blackboard and its Discussion Board as tools for class rather than as a site for the community-building and democracy that Feenburg argues can result from communication technologies. 

Because the study focused on students’ perceptions of the effectiveness with which faculty used the course management software, it does leave me with unanswered questions regarding students’ perception of the interface design, especially in regards to the Discussion Board and whether it encourages or discourages engaged discussions.

ENGL 821: Roundtable Handout

Somewhere in the Middle:

The Gap Between a Digital Rhetorical Theory and Practical Application

 

NCTE Framework for 21st Century Literacies

Requirementsfor successful participation in the global society:

1. Developing proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;
2. Building intentional, cross-cultural connections and relationships with others so to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought;
3.  Designing and sharing information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes;
4.  Managing, analyzing, and synthesizing multiple streams of simultaneous information;
5. Creating, critiquing, analyzing, and evaluating multimedia texts; and
6. Attending to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments. 

WPA Learning Outcomes for First Year Writing 

Electronic Environments 

1. Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts;
2. Locate, evaluate, organize, and use research material collected from electronic sources, including scholarly library databases; other official databases (e.g., federal government databases); and informal electronic networks and internet sources; and
3. Understand and exploit the differences in the rhetorical strategies and in the affordances available for both print and electronic composing processes and texts.

References

Carnegie, T.A.M. (2009). Interface as exordium: The rhetoric of interface. Computers and 
         Composition, 26, 164-173. doi: 10.1016/j.compcom.2009.05.005

Clark, J.E. (2010). The digital imperative: Making a case for a 21^st-century pedagogy. Computers 
         and Composition, 27, 27-35. doi: 10.1016/j.compcom.2009.12.004

Porter, J. E. (2009). Recovering delivery for digital rhetoric. Computers and composition, 26, 

          207-224. doi: 10.1016/j.compcom.2009.09.004

Prior, P. et al. (2007). Re-situating and re-mediating the canons: A cultural-historical remapping of
          rhetorical activity. Kairos, 11(3). Retrieved from
          http://www.technorhetoric.net/11.3/binder.html?topoi/prior-et-al/index.html

Rice, J.E. (Dec. 2008). Rhetoric’s mechanics: Retooling the equipment of writing production.
          College Composition and Communication, 60(2), 366-387. Retrieved from 
          http://williamwolff.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/edbauer-rice-video-ccc-2008.pdf
 

Zappen, J.P. (2005). Digital rhetoric: Toward an integrated theory. Technical Communication 
          Quarterly, 14(3): 319-325. Retrieved from
          http://homepages.rpi.edu/~zappenj/Vita/DigitalRhetoric2005.pdf

ENGL 801: Entry #2

Interface as Exordium: The Rhetoric of Interface

 

Carnegie, T.A.M. (2009). Interface as exordium: The rhetoric of interface. Computers and Composition, 26, 164-173. doi: 10.1016/j.compcom.2009.05.005

In this article, Carnegie responds to Manovich’s concerns for the decline of rhetoric in the face of new media and addresses questions regarding the relationship between rhetoric, composition, and new media. Carnegie uses these concerns as a rhetorical technique to introduce the concept of exordium—“a rhetorical means for ensuring the audience becomes and remains susceptible to persuasion” (p. 165). Carnegie argues that the interface in new media serves a rhetorical purpose and considering interface as the exordium of new media rhetoric and proposes three modes of interactivity as an approach to talking about and analyzing interface.

Before explaining the modes, Carnegie offers varied definitions of interface that range from physical arrangement to user interaction (p. 165). Broadly defined, “The interface facilitates and defines interaction, and it takes both concrete and abstract form” (p. 165). To illustrate this interaction, Carnegie offers the example of the printed text wherein the page acts as the point of contact.

In computer-mediated communication, however, the interface has become more pervasive and, therefore, more complicated. Carnegie defines interface “as the place of interaction whether the interactions are between user and computer, user and software, computer and software, user and content, software and content, user and culture, and the user and other users” (p. 165). The interface as the common meeting point for technological, human, cultural, and social aspects, Carnegie argues, situates it as the exordium of new media and foregrounds a need for identifying and discussing the interactivity of new media and its rhetorical implications.

 This need, Carnegie proposes, can be addressed by the “rhetorical modes” of the interface in new media: multidirectionality, manipulability, and presence.

Multidirectionality: Often associated with hypertextuality, multidirectionality is the extent to which a user can exploit the direction of communication. It refers to the various roles that a user can play in a network (receiver, sender, or both receiver and sender) and the messages used to communicate. The two primary characteristics of multidirectionality that create interactivity are 1) the permitted roles of the receiver in the network, and 2) the referential and intertextual nature of the messages (p. 167).

Manipulability: Carnegie explains that in new media, the media can be dematerialized and subject to “algorithmic manipulation” that frees the interface from fixity. The level of interactivity is the degree to which the user can change, or manipulate, the interface. On the lowest level of interactivity, users cannot change the form or create content. At the highest level of interactivity, users request information and customize the interface (p. 168-169).

Presence: Carnegie cites McMillan’s definition of presence to explain it as a mode of interactivity that illustrates the degree to which users perceive being connected both socially and spatially. On a continuum of interactivity, immersion represents the lowest level of presence while engagement represents the highest level. Flow, Carnegie explains, “constitutes an intermediary state” between immersion and engagement wherein an individual “loses a sense of self and time and becomes intensely focused on the task at hand” (p. 170).

Carnegie reasserts that the modes of interactivity are not modes of argumentation—they are modes of the exordium. In new media, however, the exordium of the communication is the interface; it is ever-present and works to continuously engage the user in interaction. She concludes by arguing that increased interactivity increases attentiveness, empowerment, and control and therefore succeeds in making the user susceptible to persuasion.

Carnegie’s article furthers our class’s attempts to define how texts function in a digital environment. While we have not explicitly discussed rhetorical theory in relation to digital texts, Carnegie offers a way for us to examine how the interface functions rhetorically. Additionally, the modes of interactivity, especially multidirectionality, could offer an interesting approach to discussing authorship.

Finally, Carnegie’s article has been especially helpful for my own research project on Black Board. The modes help me understand not only how the interface of the discussion board might encourage or constrain the interactivity to make the forum more or less appealing to teachers and students but they also help me consider Selfe and Selfe and Feenberg’s arguments of democracy through a more concrete approach.

ENGL 821: Entry #4

The Digital Imperative: 

Making a Case for a 21st-Century Pedagogy

Clark, J.E. (2010). The digital imperative: Making a case for a 21^st-century pedagogy. Computers and Composition, 27, 27-35. doi: 10.1016/j.compcom.2009.12.004

In this article, Clark presents a reshaping of composition pedagogy that considers new uses of technology to address the “digital imperative” (p. 28) outlined by scholars such as Yancey and Vaidjyanathan. Reshaping our pedagogy, she argues, requires understanding the flux of technology and that the current go-tos (e.g., ePortfolios, wikis, social networking) are “not the final development of in composition pedagogy” (p. 28).  Furthermore, this reshaping should immerse composition students in digital media—analysis, exploration, and creation of digital personae and civic literacy (p. 28).

To frame her argument, Clark compares the impact of the technological shift to that of the invention of the printing press. Developments in communicative technology foreground questions of authorship and authority. Citing Yancey, Balkin, Vaidhyanathan, Lanham, and Gee, Clark explains how she has reconfigured her composition classroom “as an emerging space for digital rhetoric” (p. 29).

To illustrate this reconfiguration, Clark describes various Web 2.0 technologies that she has incorporated into the classroom and their different rhetorical considerations. ePortfolios, for example, allow students to “experiment with the malleability and hyperactivity of text as they revise and alter their writing over time” (p. 29). Additionally, ePortfolios provoke questions of authorship, ownership, and private/public artifacts. 

Clark also shares experiences with digital stories as an approach to visual rhetoric and political freedom, Second Life as a site of interaction and activism, and blogs as “quick and dirty argumentation in action” (p.p. 32-34). These approaches, she claims, acknowledge the public domain of digital writing and invite students to participate in generating public content.

Clark’s article provides a practical approach to integrating technology in the classroom. Including specific examples of student products and realizations helps to demonstrate the impact of reconfiguring composition pedagogy. Composition instructors interested in incorporating Web 2.0 technologies would benefit from Clark’s article. Because Clark argues for a shift in pedagogical paradigm, she does not address many of the practical challenges, such as technical skill for manipulating technology or grading these digital texts.

One of the most useful aspects of this article was its citation of digirhet.org which led me to this Zappen's bibliography for rhetorical studies.