Research setting and sample

The study was conducted at a Saudi university in the second semester of 2012. The sample comprised 43, full-time undergraduate students enrolled in an elective unit titled, An Introduction to Educational Technology for a Bachelor of Education program. A minimum sample size of 30 is recommended for quantitative studies, including correlational, causal-comparative/quasi-experimental studies, and a sample larger than 30 is more likely to provide meaningful results (Gay, Mills, & Airasian, 2009). Thus, for the purpose of this mixed methods case study, the sample size of 43 participants was considered acceptable and reasonable for an accurate analysis.

All of the participants who took part in the study were volunteers and were provided with enough information about the study to make an informed decision to participate. The sample of this research was selected using simple random sampling (Creswell, 2009; Gay et al., 2009; Moore

& McCabe, 2006). Moore and McCabe (2006) stated that "a simple random sample (SRS) of size n consists of n individuals from the population chosen in such a way that every set of n individuals has an equal chance to be the sample actually selected" (p. 205). All students who agreed to take part in the research were assigned a number that was entered in an Excel spreadsheet. To choose a random sample from the data in the spreadsheet, random numbers were assigned to each row.

The RAND function in Excel was used to generate random numbers for a cell or group of cells which produced a random sample of 45 students. Two students withdrew from the course due to conflicts with their study schedules during the data collection. As a result, the final number of participants was 43 male students.

The Introduction to Educational Technology unit was an elective in the Bachelor of Education program at the university. This course was chosen because it was the only general educational course in the area of educational technologies that was available to all students regardless of their area of study. This allowed the accessibility to a wide range of students from different discipline majors. In addition, this course was the only course that specifically required students to engage with technology-based content and did not require an existing knowledge of the subject. Therefore, it was expected that participants have a range of aptitudes and perspectives on the use of technology. Moreover, this course was chosen because the interest and support of the research at hand by the researcher provided a convenient access to participants and their instructor.

As the researcher is an academic member in the field of educational technology, this course seemed more appropriate for the current research where the researcher have the ability to work and deal

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with the course's materials and contents. It was offered in both semesters and ran for 15 weeks.

The course was normally delivered in a weekly, 2-hour lecture. The main objective of this course was to provide students with the basics of educational technology and its applications, as well as to equip them with the essential knowledge and skills to understand and integrate educational technologies and tools in their learning environments. The objectives of this course included:

 Discussing the historical development for the education and educational technologies.

 Explaining the concept of the education technologies and showing its relation with the concept of the teaching aids.

 Explaining the communication process and its importance through human communication in life and the educational process.

 Discussing the role of the teaching aids in learning and education.

 Explaining the basics of selecting and using the teaching aids.

 Comparing the different characteristics and defects of education technologies and teaching aids.

This course was conducted in four online tasks. The themes of these four tasks corresponded to the four chapters of the original course in order to meet the course's requirements.

The subject outline and details, as well as examples of the learning tasks are provided in Appendix J. The students were required to work in groups of 4-5 participants, and use blogs and wikis to complete these online tasks. The instructor was an academic lecturer in the Department of Educational Technology who had taught this unit for more than 10 years. The instructor had set a particular weekday to commence the course; however online activities ran throughout the week.

In addition, the instructor was available for face-to-face meetings when required. In order to meet the course requirements, the students were expected to attend and participate in all the online learning activities using their wikis and blogs and other SLTs (e.g., YouTube, Google Documents, SlideShare, and Social Bookmarking).

For the purposes of this project, a course website that included blogs and wikis was created where invited users could only access the course’s blog and wiki. A blog site (www.slts12.blogspot.com) was created using Google blogger and was devoted to the curriculum.

The blog consisted of the following parts: home page; introduction to the course, about the curriculum; lectures and lessons; tasks and assignments; assessment; wiki page; groups; references and sources; and help and support (see Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2. Blog site (www.slts12.blogspot.com), Translation of the Arabic text that is associated with the numbers in the figure is: (1) course's title; (2) home page; (3) introduction; (4) about the curriculum; (5) lectures and lessons; (6) tasks and assignments; (6) assessment; (7) wiki page; (8) groups; (9) references and sources; (10) help and support; and (11) questions.

In addition, a wiki for the project was created using WikiSpaces (www.web2slts.wikispaces.com) that comprised several pages: introduction; about Wiki; Web

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2.0; lessons and lectures; four tasks; groups; help and support; assessment; blog page; sources; and questions and inquiries, (see Figure 3.3.).

Figure 3.3. Wiki page (www.web2slts.wikispaces.com), Translation of the Arabic text that is associated with the numbers in the figure is: (1) course's title; (2) introduction; (3) home page; (4) about the wiki; (5) Web 2.0;

(6) lectures and lessons; (7) tasks.

The researcher, in collaboration with the course lecturer, presented two introductory 2-hour sessions to the participants. The first session introduced the project, purpose of the study, application procedures, and timeline of the project. The participants were asked to create Gmail accounts and send their email addresses to the researcher and the lecturer in order to communicate and receive invitations for participation. The second session introduced the students to the blog and wiki tools and presented detailed information about how they could create and use their own blog and the wiki. The participants were also introduced to using other SLTs (e.g., YouTube, Google Documents, SlideShare, and Social Bookmarking).

The participants were divided randomly into nine groups each of four to five members. Each group was asked to nominate a group leader. All the participants were invited to join the project's blog and wiki. The researcher created a wiki page for each group in the main project's wiki, in which

participant using their own username and password. Separate wiki pages for each task were created and linked each page with its respective group such that each group had four pages for the four tasks as shown in Figure 3.4.

Figure 3.4. Wiki groups page (www.web2slts.wikispaces.com)

Each group was required to discuss their projects, exchange opinions and ideas, as well as share files and photos related to their projects. They were encouraged to discuss their tasks, share their ideas and information, and reflect on their experience using their own blogs and wikis. Then, each group presented their tasks as collaborative reports through their wikis, and the group presentations were required to be uploaded to their blogs.