عنوان

The impact of website use on students' perception of the student-lecturer relationship within higher education in Saudi Arabia

Number

TLets646804

Title Proper

The impact of website use on students' perception of the student-lecturer relationship within higher education in Saudi Arabia

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Alshahrani, Saeed

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Huddersfield

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2013

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Thesis (Ph.D.)

Text preceding or following the note

2013

Text of Note

Many researchers have discussed the student-lecturer relationship in the classroom. These studies have concluded that the association between student and lecturer must be positive in order for each of them to benefit. Studies carried out so far have focused on the studentlecturer relationship and the impact of factors such as age, gender and the cultural background of the student or lecturer. Most of these studies have discussed the studentlecturer relationship in terms of the lecturer's power in the classroom and classroom management. Previous studies have also discussed student engagement in the classroom and have shown evidence of how it impacts on student learning outcomes. Studies have discussed the positive impact of websites on students and lecturers' performance along with improving teaching strategies. Previous studies have also shown the importance of the student-lecturer relationship and their academic engagement in the classroom. However, there are as yet no studies that have highlighted the impact of internet website use by students, as additional sources of information, in relation to their relationship with their lecturers and their academic engagement in the classroom. This study aims to investigate this impact from a students' perspective. The impact of websites in this research focuses on and investigates social power in the classroom i.e. expert power and referent power and academic engagement i.e. academic self-confidence, academic reliance and connectedness. A mixed method approach was employed to collect the required data from respondents. This method included quantitative data to measure the impact and qualitative data to study the reasons behind the impact. To achieve these objectives, a questionnaire targeting undergraduate and graduate students was sent to 30 universities and educational organisations in Saudi Arabia. In total, 1361 valid responses were collected. Of these, 969 identified themselves as male, and 377 as females, while 15 did not specify their gender. Quantitative data was analysed using PASW and thematic analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data with results presented and discussed together. The findings of the study show that there is an impact on the student-lecturer relationship, when websites are used, in all tested criteria but at different levels. Results of this study show that the relationship gap between students and their lecturers is increasing due to website use by students. The results also show that websites have impacted positively on students' academic engagement in the classroom. The author's recommendations to reduce the negative impact of websites on student-lecturer relationship are provided at the end of this thesis.

Q Science (General) ; QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science ; QA76 Computer software

Alshahrani, Saeed

University of Huddersfield

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y