The Influence of Web-supported Independent Activities and Small Group Work on Students' Epistemological Beliefs

Tolhurst, D.

Epistemological beliefs are those concerning the nature of knowledge and learning: beliefs about how individuals come to know, and how knowledge is constructed. There is growing evidence in the literature that indicates epistemological beliefs influence students learning, but little research as to how learning environments impact on students' epistemological beliefs, and hence students' approaches to study. This paper reports on a research project that investigated the effects of a major course revision on students' epistemological beliefs. The course that underwent revision was a large undergraduate information systems course. The learning environment created aimed to engage students in independent webbased learning, and utilised small-group workshop activities based on students' previous independent study. The independent work required students to undertake web-supported independent activities (WSIA) before attending lecturer facilitated small group workshops. Formal lectures were minimised to just five 1-hour lectures in the session. Research into students' epistemological beliefs was undertaken at the time of the introduction of the new course structure, and encouragingly, some aspects of students' beliefs were changed in just one teaching session (even if not in the way anticipated). This paper briefly describes the new web-supported course structure and then reports on quantitative results of the accompanying epistemological beliefs research. Implications of this research for structuring learning environments in universities are discussed.

Cite as: Tolhurst, D. (2004). The Influence of Web-supported Independent Activities and Small Group Work on Students' Epistemological Beliefs. In Proc. Sixth Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2004), Dunedin, New Zealand. CRPIT, 30. Lister, R. and Young, A. L., Eds. ACS. 311-316.

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