Authors:
Aikaterini Maragkou
1
and
Maria Rangoussi
2
Affiliations:
1
MSc “ICT for Education”, Dept. of Early Childhood Education, University of Athens, 13A, Navarinou str, Athens and Greece
;
2
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, University of West Attica, 250, Thivon str, Athens-Egaleo and Greece
Keyword(s):
Modern Greek Literature, Webquest, ICT Integration, ICT Addition, Collaborative Learning, Junior High School, Motivation, Educational Design, Evaluation, Learning Outcomes.
Abstract:
This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of an innovative, collaborative learning approach to the teaching of Modern Greek Literature to teenage students of Junior High School. The proposed method is based on a WebQuest especially designed for this study and aimed to motivate students, increase their collaborative skills, achieve enhanced learning outcomes and change their attitude towards the subject of Literature to the positive. An educational intervention is designed and implemented in a Model Junior High School in Athens, Greece, for comparative evaluation purposes. Two 2nd grade cohorts of students are taught in parallel the same material with (experimental group) or without (control group) the use of the WebQuest. Research questions comparatively evaluate ICT ‘integration’ through the WebQuest as compared to ICT ‘addition’ of more conventional ICT-based assistive tools, along the axes of student motivation, collaborative skills, learning outcomes and attit
ude towards a ‘difficult’, unpopular school subject such as Literature. Experimental results show that the proposed approach of ICT integration using the WebQuest effectively promotes student motivation, collaborative skills and attitude towards the subject; no significant improvement is detected, though, as to the learning outcomes achieved – an issue that deserves further research, as discussed in the conclusions.
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