Student Openness in Building Online Learning Communities by Means of Movie

Abstract

The main goal of this research is to underline the role of students’ openness in forming learning communities in the online environment, outside class hours, using movie as a learning resource. The participants were formed by 58 women students in the second year, of three study programs: Pedagogy of Primary and Preschool Education, Special Education, and Psychology, out of whom 46.6% expressed their interest in taking part in building a learning community, while the rest of 53.4%, denied. To make visible the possible differences between the two groups and whether the aspects concerning the level of openness and adaptation to the academic life influence the decision of participating in the study, we have used two instruments who measures the level of openness and the level of student adaptation to environment and academic requests. The results for the comparative analysis reflect differences between the openness towards intellect and the level of adaptation to academic life. The means are higher for the students wanting to take part in the learning community. The study can be seen as a starting point in building a student profile for future participants to online learning communities where movie is a learning resource.

Keywords: Adaptation to academic life, movie, online learning community, openness

Introduction

Our study begins from the results of previous research that: presents the role of online learning communities formed by groups of students; illustrates the influence of openness as a personality trait in the interest in watching the movies and in the aspect of taking part in online learning communities. Burne and Kavan (2009) think that many teachers have searched for creative ways to use the movies as a means of intensifying learning, considering the young people’s preferences for watching a film than to listening to a lecture. The film offers not only a different form of presentation of information compared to those written as a text, but also one that talks to the students in various ways and at different levels, being more than a narration or communication of simple words (Brown, 2011). Russell and Waters (2017) believe that scientists should focus on the means by which the interest of students in film watching could increase their level of knowledge, of preoccupation and understanding of certain pieces of information. Our hereby presented study aims to deal with two of the aspects that influence the interest and involvement of students in online learning communities, by using movies as an educational resource: level of openness and level of adaptation to the student environment and academic requests.

Problem Statement

Teachers are much more focused on providing a suitable context for professional training and developing students ' professional and cross-curricular skills than on the process of adaptation to academic life (Gray, 2004). As a result, there is a lack of preoccupation in the teacher’s part for building proper relationships with the students and among the students (Popa et al., 2018). But developing positive relationships with the students should be one of the teaching goals during and outside lectures and seminars. The movie can be offered an important role in creating a suitable context for interactions and debates on specific concepts, even in an online environment. Our research underlines whether the level of openness and adaptation to academic life is in association relationship with students’ interest and participation in learning communities, in the online environment, outside class hours, by using movies sequences as an educational resource for fulfilling a groupwork task. When building an online learning community, one should keep in consider that the existence of social relationships depends mainly on the possibility of shared ideas, interests, feelings, or beliefs, rather than on being all present at the same time in the same place. In our research, using sequences from the movie “I am Sam” as learning resources, students are invited to form an online learning community outside class hours (lectures or seminars), to participate to learning activities based on mutual support to fulfil a groupwork task, a task that differed according to the study program of the students. Thus, the students of Pedagogy of Primary and Preschool Education focused on the aspects related to the way they (as future teachers) could form an efficient school-family relationship when there is only a single parent and the parent is an intellectually disabled person. The students of Psychology and those of Special Education had to illustrate the specific traits of the intellectual disability. We started on the premise that student participation in these learning activities, within the online community created especially for this purpose, would be related to their level of openness. Those having a high level of openness would take part in the online learning community, outside class hours, while those with a low level of openness would like either to work on the task without joining a learning community or to dismiss it altogether, having less interest in getting involved in studying in a new context and with new approaches. When stating this hypothesis, we followed the lines of Howard and Howard (1995) on the levels of openness, according to the scores on the openness assessment scales:

People with high scores for this factor, called “explorers”, have vast interests, are fascinated by innovations and new things, have an inclination towards introspection and reflection, and think of new approaches;

People with low scores for the Openness factor, called “protectors”, have limited interests, are at easy in a familiar environment and are seen as conventional people;

People with average scores for Openness, called “moderate”, show interest in exploring as long as it is necessary, but not for a long time because they get bored; they can focus for a long period of time on familiar things, but then, they feel the need for new things.

Research Questions and the Hypotheses of the Study

Our study attempts to give answers to the following questions:

-Do students who intend to form an online learning community have different levels of openness as opposed to those not desiring to participate in such communities?

-Is the level of adaptation to academic life different for the students who want to form an online learning community than that of those not wanting?

-Is the level of adaptation to academic life in an association relationship with the level of openness?

According to these questions, we have formulated the following hypothesis of the study:

Hypothesis 1: The students’ interest and involvement/non-involvement in group learning activities, in an online environment, using movie sequences as educational resource, differ according to their openness towards the intellectual and cultural aspects. Students that would show interest in taking part in group online learning activities would have a higher openness towards learning, on an intellectual and aesthetic level, compared to those that are not opened to participating to such activities.

Hypothesis 2: The students’ interest and involvement/non-involvement in group learning activities, in the online environment, using movie as educational resource, differ according to their level of adaptation to student environment and academic requests.

Hypothesis 3: There is a correlation between the students’ level of openness towards learning, on the cultural and aesthetic level, and the level of adaptation to student environment and academic requests.

Research Methods

We used the following research tools:

A new instrument for Openness Assessment (The Questionnaire D), elaborated by Albu (2017). Openness, as measured by D questionnaire, refers to the inclination to diversity and nonconformism, to the existence of interests for cultural and intellectual aspects. D questionnaire contains 18 items grouped in three scales. Each scale evaluates an Openness dimension: Openness towards learning (7 items), Openness towards aesthetics (5 items) and Openness towards intellect (6 items). The answer is offered on a 5-level Likert scale, with 1 meaning very little and 5, very much. Here are some examples for the items: subscale of openness towards learning – I believe you can learn something from every human being; I am sure I have still much to learn; openness towards aesthetics – For me, Art is something that gives me thrills; openness towards intellect – I like scientific challenges or I like to take part in scientific venues (conferences, debates, round tables, s.o.). The author pointed that the internal consistency of the scales is a good one: ɑ coefficient varied between .763 and .860.

The questionnaire on adaptation to student environment and academic requests (ASEAR), designed by Rusnac et al. (2015), is a new tool for understanding the impact of social changes on a micro, mezzo or macro level on the adaptation of students to academic life. The questionnaire has 45 items. It uses a 5-level Likert scale, with 1 – disagreement and 5 – agreement. It is divided into 3 main scales and 9 secondary ones. The measured values show:

1). a state of comfort/discomfort due to social environment changes (housing, communication, cultural, religious or economic, s.o.) that show the measure in which the needs (socio-communicative, eco-social and socio-economical) are fulfilled (5 items each subscale);

2). a state of comfort/discomfort due to changes on a mezzo level in the social environment that identifies the measure in which the needs for communication with relatives and friends, peer students and teachers are achieved (5 items for each subscale);

3). a state of comfort/discomfort due to the changes on the level of the self (forming and accepting a new identity, possibilities of self-appreciation, valorisation and monitoring, s.o.) that shows the measure in which the needs for professional self-management and self-time-management are fulfilled (5 items for each subscale). After the psychometric assessment of the questionnaire, the authors said there was a good internal and external validation, a good fidelity and normal distribution of the results. The alpha Crombach coefficient was a high one, .956, for the subject lot of this study.

Participants

As a participants, among the 58 women students participating in our research, all students from the Faculty of Social and Humanistic Sciences in the town of Oradea, Romania. As a percentage, 41.4% were enrolled in the study programme of Pedagogy of Primary and Preschool Education, 25.9%, in Special Education and 32.8%, in Psychology. Among those, 69% were taking one study programme of our Faculty, while 31% were taking two study programmes, out of whom 10.3% were enrolled in two university study programmes. Most 70.7% are single, and the rest, 27.6%, married and 1.7% widows. 58.6% coming from the rural environment and 41.4%, from the urban. The experimental lot was formed by 46.6% of the participants, while the control lot, of the rest of 53.4%.

Findings

For research data interpretation, we used SPSS 20.0 for Windows. We checked the data distribution with Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and saw there was a normal distribution at the level of the lots. Thus, we used parametric data analysis.

Conclusions

Even if the educative benefits of movies in learning activities and the role of learning in the constructivist framework are already known, the main goal of this study brings into focus a less researched aspect: the influence of students' openness in forming learning communities in the online environment, outside class hours, using movies as a learning resource. Research data point out that the students who intend to take part in learning communities, outside class hours, to cooperate with their peers to fulfil a groupwork task based on film sequences, show a greater openness towards intellect and a higher level of adaptation to the student environment and academic requests. These findings are in accordance with the findings of previous studies, thus underlining that Openness, as a personality trait, determines a greater interest in movie watching (Finn, 1997) and that a high level of openness leads to the well-being of the student during his/her university studies (Bardi et al., 2009). However, the results of this study illustrate that students who manage to adapt to the demands of the university environment and those with a high level of openness to learning will also be those who aim to be more actively involved in their own training. More specifically, this category of students will want to join a learning community that will allow them to learn, train and practice sustainable skills needed for their future profession. Hence the question: What do we do at university with students who want to know and be supported in learning even more than in classrooms and seminars, so outside of school hours? The answer to this question is the one that will open the future directions of applied research. Identifying appropriate teaching-learning strategies to maintain their interest in knowledge, facilitating social interactions and forming learning communities that provide students with a sustainable form of education, even in the virtual environment, is the goal and direction of future research. Identifying a more complete personality profile of students who would like to be part of an online learning community could certainly improve the results of this study. Last but not least, the development of learning activities within a community of students with common interests, using film as an educational resource, and the evaluation of the effectiveness of this approach in terms of developing sustainable skills needed for the future profession in the participants of the experimental group to outline scientifically validated educational models and practices. Overall, our advice is to use the strong points of learning activities when working with students, such the following: openness, setting a suitable learning context beyond class hours, even in the online, and finding the most appropriate learning means or resources for students’ interests. Also, it is important to start building from the strong points and positive aspects that have been identified in education than from the weak ones or difficulties (Laurian-Fitzgerald et al., 2018).

Probably the most obvious practical implications of this study are for the activity of the teacher with the students in the university. Thus, at the level of the educational policies assumed by each university, the decision-makers should consider that for the training of future professionals, sustainable learning involves setting up support groups or learning communities in which to participate the teacher and students who have common themes, common interests and goals. The way students are organised in such communities can choose optional subjects in the curricula, in which students are intrinsically motivated to participate. Simultaneously, the university professor must be aware that beyond the opening of students to sustainable learning, it is necessary to create learning contexts that contribute to a better adaptation of students to the requirements of the university environment. Petre (2022) found that pre-service teachers have a positive attitude in working collaboratively in their study groups for solving the class requirements. Therefore, a closer focus of teachers on the teaching strategies used in the activities can maintain the interest in study and long-term learning.

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