Thursday, May 12, 2016

The Effect of Blog-Mediated Work Posting on Students' Motivation in Learning Writing


THE EFFECT OF POSTING STUDENTS’ WRITING WORK ON SOCIAL MEDIA ‘WEBLOGS’
ON STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LEARNING WRITING

Ajeng Inayatul Ilahiyah
College of Languages of Sultan Agung Islamic University
Email: deathskeptic22@gmail.com

                                                       
Abstract The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of posting students’ writing work on Social Media ‘Weblogs’ towards students’ learning motivation in writing English in the Writing 4 Classes of College of Languages of Sultan Agung Islamic University Semarang in the even semester of 2014 - 2015.
This study used a descriptive qualitative research design. The subject of this study was the students of the writing 4 classes of English Education Program in the even semester of 2014 - 2015. Thus, there were 37 respondents who participated in this research. Both close and open questionnaire and interview were employed as research instruments to obtain data related to the research needs. Afterwards, the data obtained from the close questionnaire was first analysed using of SPSS 21 software application.
Then, the result showed that blog-based learning could attract the students’ Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction (ARCS) in the Writing 4 Class. The findings from open questionnaire and interview also revealed that there were positive effects of  using blog-mediated learning dealing with posting students’ writing work on Weblogs Colasula.com on students’ motivation in learning writing. The students were encouraged to learn better writing.
From the description above, it could be inferred that the respondents had positive perception towards the role of weblogs Colasula.com in the process of teaching and learning writing.
                                                                                                           
Keywords: Motivation, Social Media ‘Weblogs’, Learning Writing
____________________________________________________________________




1.    Introduction

In learning language, there are four skills that should be mastered by learners to complete communication (Genc, 2007:6). Those four skills are typically started from listening, then followed by speaking, reading and lastly writing. In language learning, writing is classified as productive skill along with speaking. In addition, Harmer (2004:3) said that writing is an essential skill that should be studied by the students as their writing capability is considerably counted on, specifically in the educational scope. However, writing is somehow perceived by students as the most difficult of all the language skills to be mastered. To them, the difficulty exacerbates when they have to learn to write in it for academic purposes across genre and the curriculum (Zhang, 2014:2).
In this case, Harmer stated that in teaching writing, a teacher can focus either on the product of that writing or on the writing process itself (Harmer, 2007:325). Concerning with the learning process of writing English, students are expected be able transfer their ideas in global scale. The capability of writing would enhance access to higher education, elevate skill in working, and boost level of life in active participation as citizen (Graham & Perin, 2007:28).
Dealing with the students’ difficulties in learning writing process, the thing students really need to conduct any types of writing is motivation. It is in line with Keller’s statement (2000:11) in relation to a certainty about the importance of learners motivation within the process of teaching and learning. Accordingly, motivation has strong effect on students’ success in learning English as foreign language, especially in writing which is professed as the most complex skill to carry out. Hence, students who are well motivated are supposed to be more successful in learning English than they who are not.
Related to the material of learning English, learning writing in University is included into genre text and essay writing. After acquiring an overview of the materials, the students are eventually assigned to write the text as their individual task in order to confirm their understanding and deepen their writing skill as well. However, the result of task is rarely discussed again after the particular material done. On the contrary, students definitely need feedback and confirmation from lecturers or others in order to enhance their motivation in learning to write better English. Therefore, improvement in advancing students’ motivation using various ways are very needed.
At the same time, we have entered an era where people are spending much of their time to communicate with other people, enrich knowledge, work on duties, look for some information, and get entertain in virtual world, internet. The use of internet especially social networking service is continuously expanding and changing. Internet usage, social networking service among educators and students, significantly reforms learning process at school (Raman, 2011:4).
Connected with the progress of SNS, the use of weblogs for social communication has been growing in popular community in recent years across the globe. It is designed with various features to provide people in constructing their ideas into writing by posting their works on it. Additionally, the findings of recent studies show that both blog-mediated can give rise to an enhanced writing experience (Zhang et al, 2014).
Through the media of weblogs to post students’ writing work, students are assigned to be more motivated and do better in both doing the writing and engaging the learning process since those works can be read by many people. They would be more conscientiously verify the works before posting. Feel of shame if there would be many mistakes in accomplishing the works cause them read more and practice more in writing. In this case, motivation is the antecedent of action rather than achievement (Dörnyei & Ema, 2011:201)

Review of Related Literature
As a global language, English is learnt in many countries throughout the world. However, people have different reasons in learning English due to its use. Indonesia is included as a county of EFL for the Indonesian people only use English in limited situation such as in educational system, particular occupation and personal needs or just for own satisfaction (Saville-Troike, 2012:4). In order to be successful in language learning, especially within acquiring writing skill, a learner needs to learn persistently and consistently because language is a matter of habit.

Teaching Writing in English
Gebhard defined writing as an activity that focuses on word choice, use of proper grammar, syntax, mechanics, organization of ideas into a coherent and cohesive form, readers, and goals, as well as an ongoing process to understand the meaning (Gebhard, 2006: 211). Thus, writing is the process of expressing ideas and thoughts of the writer using knowledge of structure and vocabulary to combine the writer’s ideas as a means of communication.
               
Motivation in Language Learning
Broussard and Garrison (2004) and Gredler (2001) stated that motivation is an encouragement for doing or not doing something (Adekeye et al, 2012:65). Motivation determines the level of effort that learners perform in achieving their goals towards  learning English. The strength of that motivation will depend on how much value the individual places on the outcome he or she wishes to achieve.
Consequently, measuring motivation can be complicated because motivation is associated with somebody’s feeling. It is somewhat difficult to display the data in numerical and statistical analysis.
Meanwhile, most of the researcher determines students’ motivation nearly by looking at the whole process of learning with several instruments. As used by Keller & Suzuki (1998), there are some factors in measuring students’ motivation, called ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) model, in which several guidelines have been prevailed in accordance with research demands.

Social Media ‘Weblogs’ as Learning Tool
Social media is media that users can easily participate in, share and create content for, including blogs, social networks, wikis, forums and virtual worlds. With the rapid development in information and communication technologies (ICTs), various changes have been made in term of the methods in the teaching and learning process; weblogs is one example.
The use of weblogs as learning media would enhance students motivation because their writing read by many people. This is certainly different from conventional learning writing which is only read by the writer and teachers. As stated by Novakovich & Erin (2013:239), social media enhanced the learning environment by providing a level of engagement that is not found in the traditional classroom.

Posting Writing Work on Weblogs
Publishing work online enables students to make contributions to the class and encourages quality in work. Accordingly students can make a visible contribution to the course and to their classmates when their work is posted online. Students produce better quality work when it is to be posted online. One of the reason is a matter of pride and a desire not to be embarrassed when classmates see the work.
In the case, posting students’ writing work on weblog as an alternative way to encourage them become more motivated to conduct various types of writing task, students in the writing 4 classes at College of Languages of Sultan Agung Islamic University Semarang were assigned to post their work on colasula.com. It attempted to grab students’ appreciation of the importance finding and using diverse ways in learning language, especially in writing.

Problem Formulation
Accordingly, the problem in this study could be formulated as follows:
“Is there any positive effect of posting students’ writing work on social media ‘weblogs’ on students’ motivation in learning writing?”
Therefore, the objective of this study is “to find out whether there is a positive effect of posting students’ writing work on social media ‘weblogs’ on students’ motivation in learning writing or not.”


2.    Methodology

Research Method
The method used in this study is descriptive qualitative research design. According to Best (1981: 93), a descriptive qualitative study is aimed to describe the characteristics, of a phenomenon that exists, opinion which are held, processes that are going on, effect that are evident, or trends which are developing. Thus, it is in line with the purpose of this study to investigate how much the effect of posting writing work on social media, specifically on Weblogs, that has already applied as a medium within the teaching and learning process towards students’ motivation in learning writing.
Furthermore, it is fundamental for gathering more data from the respondents’ perception of this study in order to obtain the stronger conclusion. In this case, Gay et al. (2011: 16) stated that the central focus of qualitative research is to provide an understanding of a social setting or activity as viewed from perspective of the research participants. Therefore, the researcher prepared some supporting instruments for collecting data to be analyzed due to the need of research accomplishment.

Subject of the Study
The population of the study was the students of the Writing 4 classes of English Education major of College of Languages of Sultan Agung Islamic University (Colasula) Semarang in the Even Semester of 2014/2015. The number of the population of the Writing 4 classes was 46 students which were divided into two classes; 4E1 Class and 4E2 Class.
The researcher used purposive sampling to determine the sample of the subject in this study. In purposive sampling, the sample is chosen for a specific purpose. This kind of sampling, which is often used in qualitative research, is selected based on the research specific needs (Cohen et al, 2007: 114-115).
Accordingly, the researcher intended to take all the  research subject as the sample of research since the amount of total population was less than 100 people, in order to get better and more valid result (Arikunto, 2006:134).  However, at the time of data collection, eight students of 4E1 class were absent, so was a student of 4E1 class. As a result, the amount of the sample in this study was 37 students.

Instrument of Data Collection
Instrument is a device that used to collect data in  a study, in which the outcome of the data would be analyzed to achieve the research objectives. The instruments of collecting data in this study comprise questionnaire and interview.

Questionnaire
In this research, the questionnaire was designed as an instrument to get data related to the effect of posting students’ writing work on weblog towards students’ writing motivation. To get rich data of the research, the questionnaire was divided into two parts: part I as close questionnaire and part II as open questionnaire. The questionnaire part I contained four constructs related to students’ motivation that would be measured; attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. Furthermore, in part II questionnaire, there would be about five questions to be answered by the participants openly as it was an open questionnaire. The researcher adapted the questions from Zhang’s research (Zhang, 2014: 674).

Interview
                The researcher considered a semi-structured interview to make an in-depth exploration about the effect of posting writing work on weblog towards students’ writing motivation. Grady (1998) in Zhang (2014: 674) suggested that semi structured interviews make it possible for the interviewer to begin with an established set of questions but also deviate from those questions in order to probe more thoroughly into helpful and interesting responses. The interview questions centered on the research problem , which concerned to the effect of posting writing work on weblog in enhancing students’ writing motivation.

Procedure of Data Collection
In this case, the participants of the study were commanded to post their writing work on colasula.com. They posted any kind of essays on the weblog. As regard for accomplishing the task, the students were required to submit the first draft of the essay by deadline within a week-long period. In that case, the researcher did observation to monitor their work as one of ways for completing data concerning with the effect of blog-mediated task assembling on students’ writing motivation.
Furthermore, after the observation was completely done, the next step was distributing the questionnaire to the students and followed by interviewing them about the effect of using blog-mediated to post writing work in its relation to foster students’ writing motivation. Consequently, the construct of questionnaire part I, would be measured by the researcher through the use of 5-point Likert-type scales (1= completely disagree; 5= completely agree). While for the questionnaire part II, the participants were free to answer the list of question as what they felt on condition that the answer was connected with the topic’s question.
Subsequently, in collecting data from the semi-structured interview, the participants interviewed would be randomly chosen from the whole class. There would be four or five participants in each interview. According to Crowther and Lancaster (2009: 147), interviewing participants in such way of group enable the researcher to be more flexible to have the questions centred and also allow the researcher to direct the topic that come into view of providing rich data or additional insight.

Method of Data Analysis
The method of data analysis in this study is qualitative approach. According to Burns (1999: 22), the qualitative approach is used as a method to analyze data with the purpose to offer descriptions, interpretations, and clarifications of naturalistic social context. Hence, the data that has been collected through several ways are described and interpreted. Those are explained in number of sequences as seen below:
1.       Assembling the data
Data collection is done by merging all data from various sources such as observation, questionnaire, and interview from the process and result of posting students’ writing work on weblog, colasula.com. 
2.       Coding the data
Coding is conducted by displaying the data collected from the questionnaires and interview.  
3.       Building interpretations
The purpose of building interpretation is to discuss, rethought, and develop explanations of how much posting writing work on weblog in its relation impacting students’ writing motivation.
4.      Reporting the outcomes
The last phase is reporting the results of the study which is supported by collected data. It is as an attempt to make this study as good as possible as it is purposed to obtain maximum results.

3.    Research Findings and Discussion

The quantitative data of questionnaire part 1 were first analyzed by descriptive statistics (e.g., mean and std. deviation) via SPSS 21, which is a statistical analysis software application.
Descriptive Statistics
Table. 4.4. The result of  ARCS motivational design.

N
Min
Max
Mean
SD
Attention
37
2.6
5.0
4.11
.390
Relevance
37
3.6
5.0
4.27
.408
Confidence
37
3.0
5.0
4.02
.564
Satisfaction
37
2.6
5.0
3.83
.500
Valid N
37




Table 4.4. revealed that the respondents had positive perception towards the role of weblogs colasula.com in the process of teaching and learning writing. The mean score of Attention was 4.11, indicating that the students’ attention was well achieved. Accordingly, the students perceived that posting writing work on weblogs Colasula.com was interesting. Compared with conventional way of submitting students’ writing work, the students were more attracted by technology usage in this era to complete their assignment. Furthermore, blog-based learning was also quite challenging for most students to work harder in their writing. Moreover, since their writing works were displayed publicly, there would be anybody who could read or comment their work openly. However, it then became their motivation to improve the quality of their writing.
The finding from interview section also afforded the same conclusion.
“Receiving feedback or comments from the readers of my work makes me more challenged to give them the best writing to read. From their feedback, I can see what  and how many mistakes I did. When I read my friends’ work which has good structure and content, I used to think “Can’t I do as best as they do?”. I always try to spend my time and thought on learning how to be a good writer.” (Irwan, interview excerpt)
As well, it was in line with the responses from students to the questions of open questionnaire whether posting writing work on weblogs motivated them to both learn writing and do the writing task. Most of students responded that posting writing work on weblog did motivate them to both learn writing and do the writing task.
Subsequently, Table 4.4 also showed that the main score of construct Relevance reached 4.27 point. Dealing with the result of the questionnaire, it could be concluded that mostly students had known the importance of learning writing. Related to the use of blog-mediated learning in the writing course, posting writing work on weblogs gave the students a lot of support to write better. Furthermore, several responses from the result of open questionnaire were also in line with the finding.
In this case, most of students perceived that posting writing work on weblogs pushed them to fully engage in learning essay writing. They said that since their writing works were not only read by the lecturer, but also their friends and other blog users, they felt encouraged to entirely engage in learning essay writing with the aim of producing writing work that was worth reading. Moreover, they could also read the essay one another that enabled them to know the quality of others’ essay. It triggered them to employ more their ability to learn essay writing. Hence, the students believed that posting writing work on weblogs was reasonably helpful.
“For students who realize that how helpful the existence of weblogs ‘colasula.com’ as a medium for posting students’ writing work, they must find it as a good strategy to boost their learning motivation in writing. I myself feel more diligent in doing the task. As it is seen by many people who open the blog, posting writing work on the weblog stimulates me to be better in producing the writing. Though this media, I can develop my ideas into good writing. Moreover, I can learn from my mistakes when I reopen my work and comments from the readers.” (Hasbi, interview excerpt)
As a result, the students tended to work hard on the writing seriously as their work would be seen or read by their friends, lecturer, or other blog users. They had come up with the effort to try their best in presenting their work for publishing them on the weblogs. Consequently, their postings would be immediately responded by many people. It gained students’ studiousness in completing their work.
Those stimuli then became an assist for most part of students to build their Confidence in accomplishing their work (mean=4,02, SD=.564). They were enthusiastic to post their writing work on the weblogs to be read and commented by other blog users. Since the comments from other blog users were displayed on it, posting writing assignments on weblogs could give the students opportunity to make their writing better by seeing and realizing what they were like at the time in the earlier of doing posting their work on the weblogs, and what they are like in the current. They could compare and make progress on their ability in writing with the use of weblogs as their work recording. Thus, after going through those experiences, the students became quite confident to show the readers their product of writing which was worth reading.
Such kind of blog-mediated learning process gave own satisfaction for most part of students in their process to both learn and produce English writing. It could be seen from Table 4.4 at construct of Satisfaction. The mean score of the construct was above the standard, 3.83. Many students liked the format of blog-based in the writing course.
Concerning with the students’ satisfaction in applying blog-mediated learning, Said Hidayatullah conveyed in interview section that he was contented to use weblogs as learning tool.
“I still remember when the first time I posted my writing on the weblogs. It was so messy. The grammar was unstructured, the content was less interesting, I also did a lot of mistakes in applying the writing log such as the layout and many more. Blog-mediated task assembling gives me opportunity to do self-correction as well. After posting my work on the weblogs, I got many comments from my friends and lecturer which triggered me to fix the mistakes and learn more how to write right and well. I take it as great motivation for me doing better and better in writing up to now, I do like this course format of blog-based.” (Said Hidayatullah, interview excerpt)
Moreover, Some of them did recommend this course format to others, especially for writing activities. Nowadays, the use of social media has been broadly applied by many people in worldwide, especially in educational world at school and campus. Thus, the advancement of  technology should be noticed by students to be more active in using it for the sake of educational progress.
“It would be better when the use of technology for example this weblogs as learning media among students and lecturer is developed to all subjects which can employ the facility. Also, weblogs usage can decrease the cause and effect of global warming as the old way to submit students’ assignment wasted many papers which made of trees. It’s much better to advance the use of technology in this era; paperless.” (Umar bin Abdul Aziz, interview excerpt)
As a result, it was known that there were  many benefits of posting writing work on weblog for improving students writing such as: they could improve their ability in writing from comments given by their friends and lecturer related to their grammar, capitalization and punctuation, content of essay and many more. They also had opportunity to share knowledge each other from posting on the weblogs that gave them an assist to explore more and construct creative ideas in order to produce a better writing.
However, there were also some points that should be noticed in applying this media ‘weblogs’ as a learning strategy regarding with posting students’ writing work on it. Some rules were needed to be prepared for lecturer before ordering students to post their work. As it used technology with internet-based connection, which meant everything seemed to be simpler as it be, an action of plagiarism  was awfully easy to be done by some students. That was why the lecturer needed to check the sources which the students should cite on their writing when they took references from the internet.
“The use of weblogs as learning media to post students’ writing work indeed has many benefits for both the lecturer and students. However, the lecturer should be more able to see the gap in applying it. The students are better avoid or lessen to use goggle translate in order to show and maintain their effort in accomplishing the task. Additionally, it is also needed for students to cite the reference they take to support their writing, and not allowed to do copying pasting, at least they can paraphrase.” (Inayah, interview excerpt)
Therefore, with regard to have a certain quality and better product of writing to be then posted on the weblogs, the students also needed to consider how to be wiser in seeing and employing the advancement of technology, so it would be more beneficial, pragmatic, and practical for them and also for their product of writing.
In conclusion, the use of weblogs as learning strategy to post students’ writing work had positive effects on students’ motivation in learning writing. The students were enjoyed using the facility, and put the evidences happened on it as their motivation to keep practicing and  increase their writing skill. This result could then answer the problem formulated about whether there was a positive effect of posting students’ writing work on social media ‘weblogs’ on students’ motivation in learning writing or not.

4.    Conclusion

This research revealed that the use of weblogs Colasula.com as learning media especially to post students’ writing assignments in the writing 4 classes could give positive contribution towards students’ learning motivation in writing. This way of using blog-mediated task assembling could drive the students to be more motivated in the process of completing writing tasks. Also, the students felt encouraged to write better and work harder in order to produce their best writing to the readers. Additionally, using weblogs Colasula.com enables the students to do self-examine, review, make comments on each other’s work, and get knowledge of each other’s work. To conclude, posting students’ writing work on social media ‘weblogs’, Colasula.com, not only gave good impact to the students for completing their writing work, but also improved their motivation in learning writing and their writing ability. Therefore, it is suggested to both the students and lecturers to take the advantages of an advancement in technology for educational purpose. Concerning with the development of technology so rapidly, the users should then be fair and judicious in using these facilities in order to achieve the better improvement on the process of teaching and learning as goal.
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