Alex Week 5 - Literature Review

Second Life adoption in education: A motivational model based on Uses and Gratifications theory

Gallego, M. D., Bueno, S., & Noyes, J

Research Aims:

The research has two aims they wished to achieve

1) to analyse the motivation of Second Life users with regard to e-learning;

2) to propose a model that explains and predicts the adoption of Second Life in this context.

Research methods:

The study used web based surveys. The researchers used SL to visit university spaces and invited a variety of people to join in their survey. The survey was distributed via URL and collected data across four months.

116 useable surveys were gathered to be used throughout the study.

In the questionnaire the participants were asked a multiple of different questions:

Part 1: Provide demographic information
Part 2: Agreement and disagreement on different topics over five categories using. The use of a slider scale was used to gauge their feelings. The scale ranged from 1 to 5 with No at all/strongly disagree” (1) to “Exactly/strongly agree” (5).

To sort through the information a hypothesis was formulated to better help construct a model.

H1: Convenience will be positively associated with the continuance intention of users to participate in a Second Life e-learning program.

H2: Entertainment will be positively associated with users’ continuance intention to participate in a Second Life e-learning program.

H3: Socialising will be positively associated with users’ continuance intention to participate in a Second Life e-learning program.

H4: Status seeking will be positively associated with prior social media sharing experience in a Second Life e-learning program.

H5: Information seeking will be positively associated with prior social media sharing experience in a Second Life e-learning program.

H6: Sharing experience will be positively associated with users’ continuance intention to participate in a Second Life e-learning program.

Using this a model was constructed.

  

Results

The results of the survey supported the model. In terms of convenience and entertainment the model showed a positive impact had been made. However, socialising does not show any significant change so the relationship was unsupported.

The study found that their results were in line with others who had attempted similar studies. They found that gratifications stimulate the use of Second Life in e-learning programs similar to that of gratification stimulation people seek from social media.

The study outlined two limitation

First, the results would have benefitted from a larger sample size. Also, students were not given the choice to use any other type of virtual worlds other than second life.

 Second, The model shows a weakness in the relationships between convenience and sharing experience with continuance. The model may need to be tweaked to fix this.

Conclusion:

Of all the literature, I have come across on second life this research has the largest sample size I’ve come across. 

Working across 6 hypotheses and using it within a diagram showed the different dynamics and interconnections clearly.

The study concludes by confirming that gratification is an important to motivation within learning in second life. They also go on to urge others who looking to research in the same area to consider the limitations they came across and work to overcome them.

References:

Gallego, M. D., Bueno, S., & Noyes, J. (2016). Second Life adoption in education: A motivational model based on Uses and Gratifications theory. Computers & Education, 10081-93. doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2016.05.001