WhatsApp as a tool for Building a Learning Community
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.20.3.2286Keywords:
COVID19 pandemic, Emergency remote teaching, blended learning, whatsapp, zoom, student engagementAbstract
WhatsApp groups are considered useful for creating and supporting virtual communities. This mixed method case study explores the patterns that emerged when we used WhatsApp to create a community of learning during the multimodal presentation of a postgraduate course in research proposal writing. Three questions drive the study: (1) What kinds of messages were sent? (2) Who participated and how? (3) How did the learners experience the use of WhatsApp in support of the community of learning? Data were collected during the presentation of a five-evening proposal writing workshop that was conducted using Zoom, WhatsApp, and YouTube as communication platforms. To answer the first question, all WhatsApp messages were analysed through both manual (individual) and automated (meta) content analysis. The third question was answered by analysing students’ responses to the end-of session online questionnaire that was administered via Google Forms. Results indicate that many messages were administrative in nature, while the most notable academic messages concerned a discussion of empirical research, research paradigms, and research design. The presenter and co-presenter together accounted for almost half of the messages sent, and the other messages were evenly distributed between members of the class, with five notably vocal students. Student responses indicated that they liked the high level of interactivity and the content, but that they disliked the time it took to form groups. The paper contributes to the literature by showing how this use of multiple WhatsApp groups was effective in creating a sense of community by facilitating access, relationships, vision, and function (West and Williams, 2017). More research is needed in determining the extent to which students might support one another with conversations outside of the main WhatsApp group.
References
Ahad, A.D. and Lim, S.M.A., 2014. Convenience or Nuisance?: The ‘WhatsApp’ Dilemma. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, [online] 155(October), pp.189–196. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.10.278>.
Aizenkot, D. and Kashy-Rosenbaum, G., 2019. Cyberbullying victimization in WhatsApp classmate groups among Israeli elementary, middle, and high school students. Journal of interpersonal violence. [online] Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260519842860>.
Cabitza, F., Scramaglia, R., Cornetta, D. and Simone, C., 2016. When the web supports communities of place: The ‘Social Street’ case in Italy. International Journal of Web Based Communities, [online] 12(3), pp.216–237. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWBC.2016.077758>.
Carlen, U. and Jobring, O., 2005. The rationale of online learning communities. International journal of web based communities, [online] 1(3), pp.272–295. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWBC.2005.006927>.
Friesen, N., 2012. Defining Blended Learning. Learning Spaces, [online] (August), p.10. Available at: <http://learningspaces.org/papers/Defining_Blended_Learning_NF.pdf>.
Gachago, D., Strydom, S., Hanekom, P., Simons, S. and Walters, S., 2015. Crossing boundaries: Lecturers’ perspectives on the use of whatsapp to support teaching and learning in higher education. Progressio: South African Journal for Open and Distance Learning Practice, [online] 37(1), pp.172–187. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.25159/0256-8853/579>.
Garrison, D.R., Anderson, T. and Archer, W., 1999. Critical inquiry in a text-based environment: Computer conferencing in higher education. The internet and higher education, [online] 2(2–3), pp.87–105. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1016/S1096-7516(00)00016-6>.
Graham, C.R., 2006. Blended learning systems. In: The handbook of blended learning. [online] Pfeiffer San Francisco, CA.pp.3–21. Available at: <https://books.google.co.za/books?id=tKdyCwAAQBAJ&lpg=RA1-PA3&ots=BiiIKzCCfk&dq= Blended learning systems. In%3A The handbook of blended learning.&lr&pg=RA1-PA3#v=onepage&q=Blended learning systems. In: The handbook of blended learning.&f=false>.
Hammond, M., 2017. Hammond (2017). What is an online community. International Journal of Web Based Communities, [online] 13(1), pp.118–136. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWBC.2017.082717>.
Ke, F. and Hoadley, C., 2009. Evaluating online learning communities. Educational Technology Research and Development, [online] 57(4), p.487. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-009-9120-2>.
Koomson, W.K., 2019. Ontology of Ubiquitous Learning: WhatsApp Messenger Competes Successfully with Learning Management Systems (LMS) in Ghana. International Association for Development of the Information Society, [online] pp.75–82. Available at: <https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED601178>.
Kurniasih, N. and Riyadhsyah, T., 2017. Virtual ethnography study of inter-lecturer communication in national young lecturers forum WhatsApp group. In: 8th International Conference of Asian Association of Indigenous and Cultural Psychology (ICAAIP 2017). Atlantis Press.
Malik, A., Dhir, A., Kaur, P. and Johri, A., 2020. Correlates of social media fatigue and academic performance decrement. Information Technology & People, [online] 34(2), pp.557-580. Available at: .
Moodley, M., 2019. WhatsApp: Creating a virtual teacher community for supporting and monitoring after a professional development programme. South African Journal of Education, [online] 39(2). Available at: <https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v39n2a1323>.
O’Connor, C. and Joffe, H., 2020. Intercoder Reliability in Qualitative Research: Debates and Practical Guidelines. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, [online] 19, pp.1–13. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1177/1609406919899220>.
O’Hara, K., Massimi, M., Harper, R., Rubens, S. and Morris, J., 2014. Everyday dwelling with WhatsApp. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, CSCW, [online] pp.1131–1143. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1145/2531602.2531679>.
Ruas, P.H.B., Cardoso, A.M.P. and Nobre, C.N., 2017. Persuasive technology in online social networks: a systematic literature review. International Journal of Web Based Communities, [online] 13(4), pp.404–424. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1504/IJWBC.2017.089351>.
Schwind, A. and Seufert, M., 2018. WhatsAnalyzer: A tool for collecting and analyzing whatsapp mobile messaging communication data. Proceedings of the 30th International Teletraffic Congress, ITC 2018, [online] pp.85–88. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1109/ITC30.2018.00020>.
Tshabalala, M., Ndeya-Ndereya, C. and Van der Merwe, T., 2014. Implementing blended learning at a developing university: Obstacles in the way. Electronic Journal of e-Learning, [online] 12(1), pp.101–110. Available at: <https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1020735>.
West, R.E. and Williams, G.S., 2017. I don’t think that word means what you think it means”: A proposed framework for defining learning communities. Educational Technology Research and Development, [online] 65(6), pp.1569–1582. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-017-9535-0>.
Witthaus, G., Rodriguez, B.C.P., Guardia, L. and Campillo, C.G., 2016. Next Generation Pedagogy: IDEAS for Online and Blended Higher Education. Final report of the FUTURA (Future of University Teaching: update and roadmap for advancement) project. [online] Available at: <http://hdl.handle.net/10609/51441>.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Johannes Cronje, Izak

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Open Access Publishing
The Electronic Journal of e-Learning operates an Open Access Policy. This means that users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is that authors control the integrity of their work, which should be properly acknowledged and cited.