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Title:
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DISTANCE STUDENTS READINESS FOR AND INTEREST IN COLLABORATION AND SOCIAL MEDIA |
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Author(s):
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Bruno Poellhuber, Terry Anderson, Nicole Racette |
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ISBN:
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978-972-8939-71-7 |
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Editors:
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Miguel Baptista Nunes and Pedro Isaías |
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Year:
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2012 |
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Edition:
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Single |
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Keywords:
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Survey, distance students, social software, gender, Canada, age |
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Type:
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Full Paper |
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First Page:
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129 |
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Last Page:
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136 |
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Language:
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English |
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Cover:
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Full Contents:
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click to dowload 
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Paper Abstract:
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Social media and social networking tools offer new educational affordances and avenues for students to interact, that may alleviate the drop-out rate problem faced by distance education institutions (Rovai, 2003). However, we know little about distance students expertise with social media or their interest in using them to learn individually or to collaborate with peers. To investigate these issues, an online questionnaire was distributed to students from four large Canadian distance education institutions. A systematic sampling procedure lead to 3462 completed questionnaires. The results show that students have diverse views and experiences, but they also show strong and significant age and gender differences in a variety of measures, as well as an important institution effect for interest in collaboration. Males and younger students score higher on almost all indicators, including cooperative preferences. The limits of the study and future developments and research questions are outlined. |
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