Breaking barriers through edmodo: A qualitative approach on the perceptions of university of malaya undergraduates

Abstract

With the advancement of digital technology, software and applications are overwhelmingly accessible to teachers and students. Digital designs for teaching and learning are highly encouraged by scholars as they prepare students of today for the demands of the future workforce. Thus, many educators use available social networks for their classrooms. However, the use of social networks in education presents disadvantages, as their invention is geared toward social networking purposes. Therefore, it’s important to ask whether social learning platforms, such as Edmodo, provide a better alternative. The research aims to elucidate strategies for and advantages of executing Edmodo in education. The research employs purposive sampling, which led to sample of a total of four undergraduates from a prestigious Malaysian university. The research frameworks are on the theories of constructivism, hermeneutics, symbolic interactionism, and interpretivism, which focus on the process of meaning making and one’s interpretation of a phenomenon. It aims to generate insights and sharing through in-depth interviews using interview protocol, photographs, and concept maps. The study executes open coding to identify emerging themes; axial coding, which focuses on finding the themes’ consistency; and selective coding, whereby core categories are selected in order to illuminate Edmodo’s effects. The findings are presented in a narrative manner. The pedagogical implications pertain to how Edmodo breaks barriers by enabling students to access learning resources beyond the classroom and empowering student-centered learning through novelty of tasks, suitable learning environment, and mobility.