Edmodo: researching potential strengths and weaknesses (articles in review)

In my own teaching practice and learning for professional development purposes I have had to deal with a range of learning management platforms. Edmodo contrasted substantially against the more commonly used LMS systems such as Blackboard, Canvas or Moodle. 

The interface looked extremely simple and that was appealing. When teaching online, the last thing you want is to put off students' engagement by the complexity of the learning environment. And of course there was the Edmodo app. That simplifies things even further. 

The other feature that appealed to me was "the wall". The wall called for teacher and student posts, replies, likes, questions - INTERACTIVITY! COMMUNICATION! I always felt like the other platforms, although had the capacity to support forums and discussions, lacked teacher-student, student-student interaction. The teacher had to create prompts for it and then students deal with them like another piece of assignment - they have to leave a few comments, they have to engage in discussions - it is required... A wall, very much like Facebook's, enables a more lively socialization. Brings life to this page. Brings engagement. Brings connectivity.

Siemens's (2005) groundbreaking study of connectivism establishes the principles that:

(a) learning rests in diversity of opinions and 

(b) nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. 

The study stresses particular role of social network in learning and knowledge sharing, as an additional element in understanding learning models in a digital era (ibid). 

This provides the theoretical underpinning to assume that a learning management system which enables and supports communication and opinion sharing by means of a social network (such as Edmodo) with effective connection to relevant information (files) would be most effective means of learning. 

In theory. I thought. Further explorations of later studies confirmed this thought.

In 2013, the Journal of e-Learning and Higher Education published an interesting article by Dr Mathupayas Thongmak, a Professor of the MIS Department of the Business School at Thammasat University in Thailand titled "Social Network System in Classroom: Antecedents of Edmodo © Adoption". 

The study viewed Edmodo as a social-networking site (SNS) that "claimed to provide a secure learning platform for learners and educators. It aimed to measure the adoption level of the Edmodo against the various constructs of the well-known, Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). 

Specifically this included:

1. Perceived Usefulness (Venkatesh and Bala, 2008) 
2. Perceived Ease of Use (Venkatesh and Bala, 2008) 
3. Instructor Characteristics (Selim, 2007) 
4. Student Characteristics: Dependent (Charkins et al., 1985) 
5. Student Characteristics: Collaborative (Charkins et al., 1985) 
6. Student Characteristics: Independent (Charkins et al., 1985) 
7. Past Behaviour (Conner and Armitage, 1998) and 
8. Intention to Use (Venkatesh and Bala, 2008)

To measure the constructs, the study used an online survey administered by means of Google Docs with a convenience sampling (circulated among students of the MIS course of the same university). The course was delivered using Edmodo for classroom collaboration purposes. n=182 (79.5% of the 229 questionnaires sent were returned). 

The most interesting outcomes of this study were that:

Perceived usefulness was found to be the most important variable determining the adoption and usage of Edmodo. At the same time, many respondents supported Edmodo usefulness:

“Edmodo is a good system, has many features.”

“Edmodo enables teachers to directly communicate with students and to give assignments.” 

“Edmodo can directly upload or submit files.” 

“Edmodo has a system which enables assigning homeworks, grading, giving information, and updating news.” 

“Edmodo is beneficial since it creates communication networks between students or teachers and students.” 

“Edmodo has more privacy.” 

“Edmodo is good in terms of its grading feature.” 

“Edmodo enables me to submit homework and notifies the assignments’ deadline to me” 

“Edmodo is more suitable for education.” 

Perceived ease of use was the second most important factor to determine acceptance of Edmodo:

“Edmodo is easy and it offers more convenience to submit assignments” 

“Edmodo is easily understood and has more convenience features” 

“Edmodo is easy to use” 

And finally, instructor characteristics were the third crucial factor to affect Edmodo’s acceptance as a classroom collaboration tool. Important characteristics of educators were: 

"Encouraging students to participate"

"Expressing his/her cares to students"

"Focusing on teaching, and boosting group activities." 

Student reflections highlighted by the author reinforced my initial perceptions about the fact that Edmodo enabled teacher-student and student-student communication. It confirmed the impression that Edmodo was an easy-to-use tool, which is particularly important for first-year University students, just entering a new learning environment. The study put hope in me about the potential other benefits Edmodo could bring in terms of diversity of activities that could be organised, particularly in groups. 

What I was worried about is that the interactivity feature could only be tested once the students would already be enrolled on the course. You cannot have certain things ready in advance, you can only do them as you go along. 

This was confirmed as I started to work with the platform, creating the first messages to students and organizing the lesson materials. But this I will discuss separately...

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References:

Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age. International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, 2(1). Retrieved from http://www.itdl.org/

Thongmak, M. (2013). Social Network System in Classroom: Antecedents of Edmodo © Adoption. Journal of e-Learning and Higher Education, 2013 (2013), 1–15. Available from https://doi.org/10.5171/2013.657749.