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The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks
A textbook is a boundary object of interest among students within given communities, in some instance, a region or a whole country. Students in such communities have the possibility to engage collaboratively to study and gain a better understanding of similar content together. Collaborative work lev...
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Department of Computer Science
2020
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| _version_ | 1867613283352051712 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Ncube, Sinini P |
| author2 | Suleman, Hussein |
| author_browse | Ncube, Sinini P Suleman, Hussein |
| author_facet | Suleman, Hussein Ncube, Sinini P |
| author_sort | Ncube, Sinini P |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | A textbook is a boundary object of interest among students within given communities, in some instance, a region or a whole country. Students in such communities have the possibility to engage collaboratively to study and gain a better understanding of similar content together. Collaborative work leverages mass communications that have become a beneficial means of enabling knowledge construction through independent and flexible learning mechanisms. Currently, textbooks are presented as PDFs on online portals with links to discussion forums for discussing the given resources. However, one major challenge is the lack of connection between the content being discussed and where it is discussed. Also, separating forums from their content leads to the discussion of topics that are sometimes irrelevant to the course content as discussions are mainly for general inquiries. In this dissertation, the feasibility of an academically focused social networking system that combines forums with their respective resources was investigated. This research explores various ways of altering the presentation of forums in an attempt to improve co-reading and increase textbook related interactions. An experimental system with internal forums, which are embedded inside eTextbooks, was created. The traditional form of rendering discussions as a standalone platform was also presented as a control system. Our objectives were to determine if the presentation of discussion forums inside resources affect the number and quality of interactions. Another objective was to determine if anonymous identity is essential for collaborating on educational learning platforms. The system was tested and evaluated with high school students as well as university students through various experiments that compared the traditional forums to the proposed system. This work adds nuance to our understanding of effective co-reading for shared boundary objects. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/31756 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:33:40.116Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2020 |
| publishDateRange | 2020 |
| publishDateSort | 2020 |
| publisher | Department of Computer Science |
| publisherStr | Department of Computer Science |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/31756 The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks Ncube, Sinini P Suleman, Hussein Meinel, Christoph Computer Science A textbook is a boundary object of interest among students within given communities, in some instance, a region or a whole country. Students in such communities have the possibility to engage collaboratively to study and gain a better understanding of similar content together. Collaborative work leverages mass communications that have become a beneficial means of enabling knowledge construction through independent and flexible learning mechanisms. Currently, textbooks are presented as PDFs on online portals with links to discussion forums for discussing the given resources. However, one major challenge is the lack of connection between the content being discussed and where it is discussed. Also, separating forums from their content leads to the discussion of topics that are sometimes irrelevant to the course content as discussions are mainly for general inquiries. In this dissertation, the feasibility of an academically focused social networking system that combines forums with their respective resources was investigated. This research explores various ways of altering the presentation of forums in an attempt to improve co-reading and increase textbook related interactions. An experimental system with internal forums, which are embedded inside eTextbooks, was created. The traditional form of rendering discussions as a standalone platform was also presented as a control system. Our objectives were to determine if the presentation of discussion forums inside resources affect the number and quality of interactions. Another objective was to determine if anonymous identity is essential for collaborating on educational learning platforms. The system was tested and evaluated with high school students as well as university students through various experiments that compared the traditional forums to the proposed system. This work adds nuance to our understanding of effective co-reading for shared boundary objects. 2020-05-02T14:53:46Z 2020-05-02T14:53:46Z 2019 2020-04-29T09:36:23Z Doctoral Thesis Doctoral PhD https://hdl.handle.net/11427/31756 eng application/pdf Department of Computer Science Faculty of Science |
| spellingShingle | Computer Science Ncube, Sinini P The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks |
| thesis_degree_str | Doctoral |
| title | The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks |
| title_full | The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks |
| title_fullStr | The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks |
| title_full_unstemmed | The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks |
| title_short | The use of social media on mobile devices to support the co-reading of eTextbooks |
| title_sort | use of social media on mobile devices to support the co reading of etextbooks |
| topic | Computer Science |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/11427/31756 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT ncubesininip theuseofsocialmediaonmobiledevicestosupportthecoreadingofetextbooks AT ncubesininip useofsocialmediaonmobiledevicestosupportthecoreadingofetextbooks |