CONFORMITY BEHAVIOR IN AN ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT
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1
Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Australia
Aims: The aim of this study was to examine conformity behavior within an online learning environment. This is particularly important as this mode of teaching is becoming more widely used in higher education. Method: The study was conducted within Blackboard Collaborate, an online learning environment. The 74 experimental and control group participants were administered general knowledge questions and a face expression recognition task. There were three automated confederate participants who responded prior to the naïve participant. In the control group, the confederate responses were hidden whereas in the experimental group the confederate responses were visible. The participants gave their responses using the Poll feature in Blackboard. Results: A repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to test for differences between the experimental and control conditions on the critical trial responses (where the confederate responses were intentionally incorrect for the experimental group). Results revealed that the experimental group made significantly more incorrect responses than the control group, F(1,72) = 4.31, p = .041, ηp² = .056. A significant interaction effect between the task and conditions was also found, F(1,72) = 5.70, p = .02, ηp² = .073. Post hoc analyses revealed that for the general knowledge questions, the experimental group made significantly more incorrect responses than the control group whereas there was no significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the facial expression recognition task. Conclusions: Results revealed that the general knowledge questions elicited greater conformity responses than the non-verbal facial expression recognition task. This difference could be due to the decreased task demands and the non-verbal characteristics of the facial expression recognition task. No differences in conformity responses were found due to age or gender. These results have implications for teaching and learning in online environments.
Keywords:
higher education,
Teaching and Learning,
online learning environments,
Conformity behavior,
cyber conformity
Conference:
Southern Cross University 13th Annual Honours Psychology Research Conference, Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, 7 Oct - 7 Oct, 2016.
Presentation Type:
Research
Topic:
Psychology
Citation:
Eveleigh
S and
Winskel
H
(2016). CONFORMITY BEHAVIOR IN AN ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT.
Front. Public Health.
Conference Abstract:
Southern Cross University 13th Annual Honours Psychology Research Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.FPUBH.2016.02.00005
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Received:
29 Sep 2016;
Published Online:
30 Sep 2016.
*
Correspondence:
Mr. Steven Eveleigh, Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Coffs Harbour, NSW, 2450, Australia, s.eveleigh.11@student.scu.edu.au