The Impact of Characteristics of Communication Media and Instruction Behavior on Collaborative Interaction and Project Performance

커뮤니케이션매체 특성과 교수행위 특성이 협력적 상호작용과 프로젝트 성과에 미치는 영향

In the new web based learning environment which has recently emerged, a variety of new learning objectives and teaching methods suited to this learning environment have been adopted. Recently, web based project-based learning methods have received a great deal of attention from those wishing to improve learning performance. The objective of this study is to identify the impact of characteristics of communication media and instruction behavior on collaborative interaction and project performance through web based group projects. The characteristics of communication media were divided into richness, flexibility, and ease of use, and the characteristics of instruction behavior were divided into support and expression, which are independent variables. Collaborative interaction as a mediate variable, was divided into information sharing and negotiation. Project performance was the dependent variable. To verify the proposed research model empirically, an experiment was conducted in which learners participated in on-line and off-line courses with group projects. The group project was conducted virtual product development(VPD), and designed a web-site about the VPD. At the end of the project, a survey was conducted. Of the 270 students, 239 responded. The students were assigned to groups of 3 or 4 members, and represented different genders and levels of computer competence. The reliability, validity, and correlation of research variables were analyzed using SPSS 14.0, and the measurement model and the structural goodness-of-fit of the research model were verified through SEM analysis using Lisrel 8.54. We found important results as follows; First, richness and ease of use has positive impacts on each of sharing information and negotiation. This suggests that richness and ease of use are useful in sharing information which is related to the task and agreeing in opinions among group members. However, flexibility has not positive impacts on sharing information and negotiation. This implies that there is no great difference in performance of PC and information literacy of user. Second, support and expression of instructor have positive impacts on sharing information and negotiation. This indicates that instructors play an important role in encouraging learners to participate in the project and communicating with them, sharing information related to the project, making a resonable decision and finally leading them to improve a project performance. Third, collaborative interaction has a positive impact on project performance. This result shows that if the ability to share information and negotiate among students was improved then a project performance would be improved as well. Recently, in the state of revitalized web based learning, it is opportune that web-based group project is practically conducted, and the impact of characteristics of communication media and characteristics of instruction behavior on sharing information, negotiating among group members and improving a project performance is verified. On the basis of these results, we propose that forms of learning, such as web based project, could be one of solution which is to enforce interaction among learners, and ultimately improve learning performance. Moreover web-based group project is able to make up for a weakness which makes it difficult to make interpersonal relations or friendship among learners in computer mediated communication or web based learning.