ICT for knowledge construction for undergraduate students in Sri Lankan universities

Abstract

Interest on how undergraduate students organize and coordinate their work such as assignments, group studies, etc. in collaborative groups through research on ICT supported collaborative learning has increased in recent years. These innovative collaborative platforms encourage students to share ideas, experiences and thought with the others. Our study aimed to explore science faculty students from three universities about the use of web 2.0 for their collaborative learning activities. We collected sample size of 529 student’s opinions which is composed of 189, 175 and 165 from each university. Most of the undergraduate students ( 96.5%) are aware of Web 2.0 and almost using it in their daily life too. Further, 2.9% of the students from the sample do not know about the term Web 2.0 but they are also using it for such collaborative activities. Comparing to the first year students’ (over all 13.01%), special degree students from third (over all 35%) and fourth year (over all 45%) are using this environment for student learning. These results suggest that most of the students are using Web 2.0 tools for their collaborative activities. They mainly use ICT based collaborative environment for chatting and discussion, content creation, file sharing, enjoyment and entertainment of four categories to construct knowledge, share knowledge and improve their learning performances. They mainly face less technological infra structure support from universities (over all 91.29%) which costs students to purchase themselves data offers (76.45% of students from all three universities regularly buy 10GB or more per month) from mobile providers to use within their university residence facilities and in common rooms inside the university premises. These discovered hidden problems and obstacles should be seriously taken into consideration by the university administration to improve the collaborative study environment among students to keep students busy with their learning activities