Electronic Student Journals: A Means to Enhance Classroom Communications

Abstract

Written journals, as a means of enhancing communication between teachers and students, are espoused quite extensively in the literature. But on the university level, where classes do not usually meet every day, the rate of exchange of the journals between an instructor and his or her students can be slowed considerably, thus limiting the benefits usually associated with this form of communication. To increase the exchange rate of journals, it was proposed that electronic mail be utilized as the medium by which the journal entries were transmitted. Eighty students in three sections of a general education required computer literacy course participated in this study. Results from the study found that the students who used electronic journals wrote significantly longer entries than the students who wrote in traditional written journals. No differences were found, though, between treatment groups as to computer-related knowledge and attitudes.