Student Engagement of Using Mobile Instant Messaging in Education: A Two-Stage Study

Abstract

Mobile instant messaging (MIM) has become a dominant means of communication for social life, but its educational value is not very well understood. Typical MIM applications are functionalized on smartphones, allowing users to send multi-modal messages with no extra service change. Facilitated by the mechanism of push notification, communication via MIM takes place in a “quasi-synchronous” form—messages are composed before being sent and responses can be postponed. Hitherto, no studies have examined the impact of using MIM on student engagement using objective measures, in addition to self-reported data. Therefore, this study will examine students’ perception of using MIM in class and its impact on student engagement. Specifically, engagement will be examined via three components: behaviorally, emotionally and cognitively. A two-stage study will be conducted. Study 1 is a case study to explore student attitude and experience of using MIM in education. Study 2 will adopt a mixed- method, quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design to compare two groups. The experimental group will use MIM app (WeChat) to conduct class discussion and activities, and the control group will use Moodle discussion forum, a threaded asynchronous communication platform for the same purpose.