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Tool-use in a content management system: a matter of timing?

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Abstract

Given the rising popularity of content management systems (CMSs) in higher education, we investigated how students use the available CMS tools, as well as whether the moment of using a CMS tool affects students’ learning. This temporal dimension has been neglected in current research on CMS use. More insight into students’ tool-use is particularly important from an instructional design perspective because research has repeatedly revealed that a learning environments’ effectiveness depends heavily on students’ adaptive tool-use. Data were collected by logging the frequency and the time students (158) use the available tools within a CMS. Repeated-measures analyses revealed that students’ tool-use changed throughout the course, a dynamism that was different for each tool and was related to course-specific deadlines. Significant temporal student differences were found for some types of tools. Furthermore, students’ course performance was significantly impacted by the moment students used the course material outlines and the discussion board. In line with expectations, effects were different dependent on the tool. Hence, by examining students’ tool-use from a temporal perspective, this study highlighted that the timing of use matters. Furthermore, this timing depends on tool functionality. Consequently, the results have interesting implications for designing CMSs and they suggest implications for releasing some type of CMS tools at specific moments in the learning process.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been made possible by a grant from the national science foundation- Flanders FWO-grant G.0408.09.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Instructional Psychology and Technology, Dekenstraat 2, Box 3770, 3000, Louvain, Belgium

    Griet Lust, Jan Elen & Geraldine Clarebout

  2. Interdisciplinary Research on Technology, Education and Communication, E. Sabbelaan 53, 8500, Kortrijk, Belgium

    Mieke Vandewaetere & Geraldine Clarebout

Authors
  1. Griet Lust
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  2. Mieke Vandewaetere
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  3. Jan Elen
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  4. Geraldine Clarebout
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Correspondence to Griet Lust.

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Lust, G., Vandewaetere, M., Elen, J. et al. Tool-use in a content management system: a matter of timing?. Learning Environ Res 17, 319–337 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-014-9161-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-014-9161-2

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