Students’ Attitudes Towards Collaborative Tools In A Virtual Learning Environment

The purpose of this study is to investigate prep class university students’ attitudes towards collaborative tools used in Moodle. Also it was aimed to find out whether or not there is a difference in students’ attitudes towards traditional and collaborative activities. The participants of the study, 28 non-English major university students, who had three-hours of Self Access Centre lessons per week, used a virtual learning environment named ‘Moodle’ for two hours each week. In order to investigate the attitudes, the participants were administered a computer readiness scale at the beginning of the study. At the end, a questionnaire was administered, and to support the data, screenshots of the activities were taken and twelve participants were interviewed. Results show that the collaborative tools in the virtual learning environment have significant positive effects according to the participants’ opinions. The students have significantly positive attitudes towards the collaborative tools, although they have not had enough experience of collaborative work. Also the students do not reflect positive attitudes towards traditional activities and, accordingly do not use them much.