Motivational Factors and the Intention of Use of a Virtual Learning

Environment

A Preliminary Study about an e-Learning Application Developed by

the Brazilian Ministry of Education

Élton Carneiro Marinho

1,2

, Mônica Ferreira da Silva

1,3

, Donaldo de Souza Dias

Eber Assis Schmitz

1,2,3

, Antônio Juarez Alencar

1,2,3

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

PPGI – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Núcleo de Computação Eletrônica – Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Keywords: Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), High School.

Abstract: This research aims to verify the impact of motivational factors on the intention of use of a Virtual Learning

Environment. The environment studied was an e-government web application used by The Brazilian Ministry

of Education offered to Brazilian high schools. In this preliminary approach, a case study was done in a private

school in Rio de Janeiro followed by an experiment with 20 of its students. Qualitative and quantitative data

allowed to endorse some of the results. Previous studies have indicated that teenagers tend to be motivated by

playful environments, pointing to the importance of the perceived enjoyment factor. Nevertheless, in this

study the perceived usefulness factor appeared as the greatest motivator for the intention of use of the adopted

technology. The results of this study will be beneficial for increasing our understanding of new generation

adoption of technology.

1 INTRODUCTION

Like many other sectors, the education sector has

being modified and improved by the use of

technology. Nowadays the use of Virtual learning

Environments or Blended Environments are

becoming ordinary, especially for the new generation.

Teenagers are enrolling in educational courses with a

high technological expectation. The aim of this

research is to throw some light and to arise some

questions about which are the relevant factors when

dealing with technological adoption by this new

generation.

Technology adoption has been the subject of

many studies (Davis, 1986; Dias, 2001; Silva, 2006;

Raaij, Schepers, 2008; Ghosh, Pries, 2013). The

motivation for this research is to understand the

behavior of teenaged students in relation to a Virtual

Learning Environment. The target population was

specified as Brazilian teenaged students.

The Brazilian Ministry of Education built an e-

government platform called e-Proinfo (MEC, 2013).

The studied group was composed by first and second

year high school students. This article is based on the

following question: “How do motivational factors

impact the intention of use of a Virtual Learning

Environment (VLE) by school students?”

This investigation focused three important

motivational factors in technology adoption (Davis,

1986; 1989; Fishbein, Ajzen, 1975):

• perceived enjoyment

• perceived usefulness

• perceived ease of use

The research aims to investigate how these factors

are perceived by the high school students of a private

school in relation to the VLE offered. It intends to

analyze the impact of these factors on the intention of

use of that environment.

2 RESEARCH MODEL

This research could be classified as a multi-method

approach. It´s composed of a case study and an

experiment,

see Figure 1. It intends to study the

477

Carneiro Marinho É., Ferreira da Silva M., de Souza Dias D., Schmitz E. and Alencar A..

Motivational Factors and the Intention of Use of a Virtual Learning Environment - A Preliminary Study about an e-Learning Application Developed by the

Brazilian Ministry of Education.

DOI: 10.5220/0005429104770482

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 477-482

ISBN: 978-989-758-108-3

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

Figure 1: Transformative Multi-method Research Design.

phenomenon of technology adoption from different

and complementary perspectives which according to

Creswell (2008) is a transformative multi-method

research approach. It collects two types of data

satisfying different perspectives. The qualitative

phase consists of a case study focused on the

organizational perspective, i.e., the school’s point of

view, and the quantitative phase consists of an

experiment focused on the student’s perspective. A

comparison of these two different perceptions of the

same phenomenon was made in this study.

The case study method allows a more detailed and

qualitative approach while the experiment method

makes possible a more quantitative and objective

analysis (Dias, Silva, 2010).

The case study was composed of the following:

• an interview with the pedagogical coordinator

of the private school

• some visits to observe the school routine

• objective interviews with the pedagogical team

In addition, documents describing the school’s

educational system were analyzed.

Twenty students from first and second year high

school of the investigated school volunteered in the

experiment. The experiment focused the same

motivational factors as the case study. Some open

questions were added in order to confirm the

measured factors.

This work is part of an ongoing research towards

investigating teenaged students’ behavior in adopting

educational technologies (Marinho et al., 2013,

2014).

3 VIRTUAL LEARNING

ENVIRONMENT (VLE)

A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a web

application where educational contents can be

assembled with a variety of different accessing tools

(Santos, 2002; MEC, 2013). A VLE helps to manage

a repository of educational contents and student

evaluations. A constant monitoring of the progress

made by participants can be done. The VLE can be

used as an addition to classroom learning (blended

learning) or only virtually. Many classes may occur

at the same time.

Forums, chat rooms, text messaging, videos and

calendars are some of the tools offered by a VLE

which promote interaction among participants in a

more ludic way. A VLE also manages different types

of participants; among others, it can be used by

students, teachers, and coordinators.

This technology allows us to enhance the

traditional education practice or to completely

transform the process of teaching and learning

through a technology rich environment (Bray,

Tangney, 2013) that brings enjoyment to how

education is experienced.

Li et al. (2008) present a survey with some

important technological aspects supporting e learning

nowadays. Li et al. (2009) show some future

technologies that can enrich the learning process.

4 TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

MODEL (TAM)

Many researchers have investigated user behavior

when faced with a new technology. TAM,

Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, 1986), is a

very robust theory since a lot of empirical studies

verified its constructs in relation to different settings,

persons, ages, and times (Dias, 1998, 2001; Dias et

al., 2005; Silva, Dias, 2004; Silva, 2006; Raaji,

Shepers, 2008; Ghosh, Pries, 2013). TAM is an

applied study of the attitudinal components of the

Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) study. This psychological

human behavioral model describes human behavior

as a variable dependent on the intention of behavior.

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Following this model, the intention of behavior is

affected by an attitudinal component and a normative

component:

B ≈ BI = w1.A + w2.SN (Fishbein, Ajzen, 1975),

thus:

B  behavior

BI  behavior intention

A  attitude  attitudinal component such as

beliefs/perceptions of consequences that would

interfere in the final attitude

SN  subjective norm  normative component

implying how social context affects intention of a

certain attitude

w1 e w2  components’ weights

Davis (1986) drops down the normative

component of the Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) model

and its weights. Two basic factors were selected by

Davis (1986) to compose these attitudinal

components when referring to technology adoption:

perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use.

Previous studies (Dias, 2001; Bray, Tangney,

2013) have indicated that teenagers tend to use the

web environment in a more playful way. Thus, an

antecedent included in this research was perceived

enjoyment in order to verify teenagers perception.

The intention of behavior factors followed the

theoretical model shown in Figure 2. Actual use could

not be evaluated because the VLE was only available

to the students during the experiment.

The perceived usefulness of a VLE is defined as

“the degree to which an individual believes that using

a particular system would enhance his or her job

performance” (Davis, 1986).

The perceived ease of use of a VLE is defined as

“the degree to which an individual believes that using

a particular system would be free of physical or

mental effort” (Davis, 1986).

The perceived enjoyment of a VLE is defined as

“the extent to which the activity of using the computer

is perceived as being enjoyable in its own right, apart

from any performance consequences that may be

anticipated” (Davis, Bagozzi, Warshaw, 1992).

5 ENVIRONMENT RESEARCH

DESCRIPTION

The VLE used in this experiment was a virtual

collaborative learning environment developed by the

Brazilian Ministry of Education. It intends to promote

a pedagogical use of information technology in public

high schools. It allows the creation, management and

development of many pedagogical elements, such as

online courses, research projects, collaborative

projects, and so on.

This VLE is offered by The Brazilian Ministry of

Education (MEC, 2013). The name of the course

content is “Qualification in Digital Technology”. The

topics addressed are distance education, network

societies and data processing evolution. It aims to

prepare students to help each other in using schools

labs.

The “Qualification in Digital Technology” is

composed by four modules:

• introduction

• hardware

• the operational system

• computers maintenance

Forum, chat rooms, text production and collective

text production are some of the available

technological options.

This VLE can be categorized as an asynchronous

and web-based learning solution (Li et al., 2008). It

allows users to learn according to their own schedule.

The case studied is a thirty-seven years old

traditional private school in the west zone of Rio de

Janeiro which began with 300 students in its high

school and which now has more than 2,000 students.

The interviewed pedagogical coordinator has worked

at the school since its creation.

The school has its own educational system. It also

has a site that was developed on its own. The site

contains information on both the academics and the

administration which is available to students and

parents.

The

classes have a traditional format. The school

Figure 2: Technology Acceptance Model and Perceived Enjoyment Antecedent.

MotivationalFactorsandtheIntentionofUseofaVirtualLearningEnvironment-APreliminaryStudyaboutan

e-LearningApplicationDevelopedbytheBrazilianMinistryofEducation

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has some technological support used to help teachers

on their classes: a multimedia kit with a computer and

a data show is available to teachers if they want to

expand their approach to a topic.

The school computer laboratory contains 25

computers with internet connection. This laboratory

was used during the experiment.

Demographic information such as age and gender

were collected as it was necessary to know the student

profiles. All students were volunteers without prior

knowledge of the VLE. The experiment occurred

during class breaks which lasted thirty minutes. In the

beginning of the experiment the computers were all

logged into the VLE.

After some initial explanation of the experiment’s

objectives, the students were asked to perform five

tasks. These tasks stimulated the navigation around

the environment. After that, the students could

navigate freely in the VLE for an unstipulated amount

of time.

At the end of the experiment, the students had to

fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire contained

12 statements on different aspects of the research.

Each aspect related to a motivational factor described

above. The statements were given in random order.

For each statement, the students had to choose a

value on a Likert scale of seven points. This Likert

scale varied from “(1) totally disagree” to “(7) totally

agree”. The factor presented good coefficient of

internal consistency using Cronbach’s Alpha (Hair et

al., 1998), as show in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Cronbach’s Alpha.

Four open-ended questions and a field for

comments were also given to the students. The

questions were also related to the motivational

factors. The whole process was accompanied by the

researcher and his assistant in order to observe the

participants’ behavior.

6 PRELIMINARY RESULTS

The demographic profile of the experiment

participating students is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Demographic variables.

Considering their use of technology and access to

the internet, the profile of the interviewed students in

our sample is the following:

• All have access to a computer and internet

connection at home

• 90% have cell phones with internet access

• 80% access the internet on a daily basis

For each statement, an average was calculated by

dividing the sum of the answers given to each

statement by the number of valid respondents, as

shown in Figure 5.

The factor with highest average (5.70) was

perceived usefulness showing that students were most

motivated by using of the VLE. In addition, this

information was confirmed by the answers given to

the open-ended question corresponding to this factor.

Perceived enjoyment obtained the lowest average:

4.68. The timing of the experiment could have

affected this result as it was done during the students’

break time between classes, which is only 30 minutes,

a time the students want to enjoy themselves.

Some students praised the different ways of

navigating, but others struggled to locate items on the

screen. One student didn’t see the navigation options

of the VLE because it was hidden under a fixed

operational system actualization window.

Students demonstrated good interaction with

computers. None of them related any difficulty in

their use. They also showed a great ability to focus on

a goal. To finish the experiment, the students spent an

average of 10 minutes. Recalling that the interval

used for the experiment was 30 minutes, the majority

of the students showed interest in the topic addressed

by the course. In the open-ended questions, only five

of them declared that they didn’t want to participate

in the course.

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Figure 5: Obtained average values.

7 DISCUSSION OF THE

RESULTS

In this study, perceived usefulness was identified as

the greatest motivator to make students adopt this

technology. This endorses previous studies with

adults (Dias, 1998; 2001; 2005; Dias et al., 2005;

Silva, 2006; Raaij, Schepers, 2008; Ghosh, Pries,

2013).

The experiment had only 20 students from a

specific area of Rio de Janeiro. This research cannot

be considered conclusive but reinforces the evaluated

factors. It also enables insights to arise.

Although Dias (2001) makes us aware of the

importance of the perceived enjoyment factor in a

teenaged group, in this research this factor had the

lowest average among the observed factors. This

result can be explained by the students’ anxiety in

finishing the tasks. They also didn’t spend much time

exploring the technological tools offered. They didn’t

use some playful options such as chat or simulators.

One of the tasks of the experiment was to browse

the VLE for some biographical information. This task

forced students to use a content visualization tool in

the VLE. This tool was praised by the students for its

content and presentation format.

The low Intention of use value could be explained

by the lack of time spent on the experiment and lack

of training given to the students on the VLE.

Therefore the students lacked sufficient contact with

all offered technological tools.

Sometimes in the environment, a navigation tab

was disposed on the bottom of the screen. Usually,

the operational system showed some alerts in this area

too. This kind of alert window inhibited the students’

visualization of an important part of the offered

content. For example, the use of a plug-in was

required on one of the computers during the

experiment. This alert window overlapped the

navigation tab’s visualization.

Students received a great quantity of information

in a short period, it could have generated a cognitive

overload that may explain the increased focus on

doing the tasks. Future research can use VLE training

as a moderator variable for the studied motivational

factors.

In general, students who took part in the

experiment were daily internet users. The offered

technology is not new to them. Future studies could

verify the previous computer knowledge of

participants, especially previous experience using the

environment studied.

Survey information was collected from students

of a private institution. Similar studies are suggested

with students of public institutions in order to

compare and validate results. The existence of

relevant differences could be verified in such a

comparison.

8 CONCLUSIONS

As observed by Dias (2001), motivational factors in

the use of a technology show a significant difference

between adults and youths. In a study with teenagers,

it was expected that the perceived enjoyment would

have been the most important factor to impact the

intention of use.

Nevertheless, perceived usefulness appeared to be

the most important factor in this experiment. It could

be explained by the group’s great ability to focus on

a goal and by the short period of time in which the

experiment took place.

The perceived enjoyment factor had the lowest

average in the evaluated factors. This could be

associated with the speed of the execution of the task

and the lack of freely using the VLE’s playful tools.

MotivationalFactorsandtheIntentionofUseofaVirtualLearningEnvironment-APreliminaryStudyaboutan

e-LearningApplicationDevelopedbytheBrazilianMinistryofEducation

481

This research is part of an ongoing investigation

about teenaged students’ perception of technology

adoption (Marinho et al., 2013, 2014). Presently, a

larger sample size is being collected to endorse or to

refute the results of this preliminary study through a

linear regression analysis with the three motivational

factors as predictors and a correlation analysis

between intended and actual use.

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