Laptops vs Desktops in a Google Groups environment

1. Laptops vs Desktops in a Google
Groups environment
Steven Lopes Abrantes
Instituto Politécnico de Viseu
(Portugal)
steven@di.estv.ipv.pt
Luís Manuel Borges Gouveia
Universidade Fernando Pessoa
(Portugal)
lmbg@ufp.pt
ICL
17-September-2010

2. Main Purpose of the study
• Establish whether the laptop users are in
the flow state when using Google Groups
• Establish whether the Desktop users are in
the flow state when using Google Groups
• Verify if Google Groups are a viable
alternative to support learning.
• Verify if laptops users are more in
the flow state than desktop users

3. Technology Environments
• New technologies allow the creation of new (better?)
knowledge spaces;
• Now, besides the school, also the working place and the
home have become places for education and learning;
• The number of people in their homes using the Internet
to increase their knowledge is increasing;
• The computer can still be understood,
not as one common tool, but a tool that
support and foster collaborative learning.

4. Technology Environments
• For a long time, it was felt that teaching was primarily (1) the
transmission of knowledge (content), (2) the training of the
memory, and (3) the sharing of the society values in students;
• It was felt that learning was to acquire knowledge through a
process of attention, memorization, and reproduction of it;
• The integration of computer in education is now a reality
impossible to ignore and one that must be studied;

5. Google Groups and the flow
experience
• An aspect related with the interaction of the users with
collaborative environments has to do with the flow experience
introduced by Csikszentmihalyi (1975).
• Csikszentmihalyi says that a person who is in the presence of
the flow state has the following characteristics:
– Clear goals and immediate feedback;
– Equilibrium between the level of challenge and personal skill;
– Merging of action and awareness;
– Focused concentration;
– Sense of potential control;
– Loss of self-consciousness;
– Time distortion;
– Autotelic or self-rewarding experience.

6. Google Groups and the flow
experience

7. Google Groups and the flow
experience
• This study uses five dimensions to define the flow state
(Trevino e Webster, 1992; McKenna e Lee,2005) :
• Control;
• Attention Focus;
• Curiosity;
• Intrinsic Interest.
• Sense of time

8. The study
• This study involves one hundred and twelve students
from a university school;
• The main tool used was Google Groups;
• The survey used five dimensions:
• Control;
• Attention Focus;
• Curiosity;
• Intrinsic Interest.
• Sense of time

9. The study
In this study we verified:
• 78.57% were males and 84,82% had ages between
sixteen and twenty four years;
• The majority of the respondents used the laptop
(72.32%) to access the tools of the project, followed by
the desktop (27,68%);
• We verified that Cronbach’s alpha is
superior to 0.7, being able to conclude
that the data is related to one same
dimension

10. The study (Laptop)
In this study we verified:
• From the factor analysis it was possible to isolate two
factors :
– Factor group 1: (Intrinsic Interest, Control and Curiosity),
– Factor group 2: (Attention Focus and Sense of time).
• In order to determine the presence of the
flow experience for users that used
laptops to access
Google Groups, it was verified that, on
average, the students were above three
(Likert scale of five points).

11. The study (Desktop)
In this study we verified:
• From the factor analysis it was possible to isolate two
factors :
– Factor group 1: (Attention Focus, Sense of time, Intrinsic Interest
and Curiosity)
– Factor group 2: (Control)
• In order to determine the presence of the
flow experience for users that used
desktops to access
Google Groups, it was verified that, on
average, the students were above three
(Likert scale of five points).

12. Conclusions
• The majority of the students were males, had ages
between sixteen and twenty four years and that most
of the students have already used discussion forums .
• The variables described all the same characteristic
(threw the determination of the Cronbhach’s alpha),
that is, the variables describe the flow experience.
• From the factor analysis it was possible
to isolate two factors (Laptop)
– Factor group 1: (Intrinsic Interest, Control and Curiosity),
– Factor group 2: (Attention Focus and Sense of time).

13. Conclusions
• From the factor analysis it was possible
to isolate two factors (Desktop)
– Factor group 1: (Attention Focus, Sense of time, Intrinsic
Interest and Curiosity)
– Factor group 2: (Control)
• The average of the five variables associated
with the flow experience, for students who
used the laptops, were greater than those
using the desktop to access the tools of
the project development.

14. Conclusions
• The majority of the students that use laptops to access
Google Groups, are in the presence of the flow
experience.
Google Groups is a good way for students
to learn when using laptops.

15. Conclusions
• We can say that mobile users interact with
Google Groups, with a more entertainment spirit
and sense of involvement and satisfaction then
the users that have used the desktop to access
Google Groups