Seeking Information from Others, Outside the Internet and from Cyber-Students: Role of Perceived Social Support

Empirical Studies
By Émilie Vayre, Raymond Dupuy, Sandrine Croity-Belz
English

Over the past few years in France, e-learning has progressively spread into educative and training spheres, including university-level education. Whilst recent researches have focused on the online behaviours of e-learners, few of them have investigated training conduct that has developed offline. From a work and organizational psycho-social point of view, we chose to study e-learners? enquiries about learning made outside the World Wide Web. We hypothesized that the conduct of students is not directly influenced by new online training contexts. Indeed, defending an interactionist and systemic approach, we consider that the development of students? enquiry strategies is linked to perceived social support provided by significant others. In order to test our hypothesis we decided to adopt a comparative approach that defines two training systems (face to face learning and e-learning). Our survey results, based on a questionnaire administered to 195?students, confirm our hypothesis. They show that e-learning programmes exert a specific influence on students? enquiries. Moreover, they reveal a modulation effect of social support. Indeed, social support provided by peers (students enrolled in the same training but also those who are enrolled in other programmes) encourages e-learners to carry out learning in face to face situations or via the phone. Finally, our research results underline the significant contribution made by people from different spheres of life to e-students? training conduct. Thus, they offer a precious information source for scientists and practitioners who are interested in online training development.

Keywords

  • e-learning
  • university students
  • information-seeking behaviours
  • enquiries made on outside of the Internet
  • social support
  • significant others
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