Abstract
The study expects to ameliorate undergraduate students’ passive attitude in speech-based large-enrollment courses through the change of submitting assignments to the learning management system to the social media platform. Hoping that the course assignment could transfer from fulfilling course requirements to nurturing knowledge-sharing skills, reinforces students’ intrinsic motivation, and increases the social impact generated from the speeches and the course. The target course in the study is an undergraduate required course offered by the College of Education at the National Tsing Hua University for all first-year students. The course has around 120 to 180 students each semester. Two main research questions in the project are: (1) How to apply social media to increase students’ motivation to write reflections in a large-enrollment course? (2) How to use social media to nurture students’ knowledge-sharing skills? The study adopts the approach of action research. The study analyzes and evaluates the effects of integrating social media into the course through a questionnaire, student interviews, and class observations. The results show that students think adopting social media for submitting assignments is feasible and will choose an appropriate platform. Viewing each other’s works could also increase their writing motivation. However, privacy considerations and peers’ feedback will influence their willingness to share. According to the action research results, we suggest the instructor can use the Facebook fan page to share indirectly and incorporate the design of excellent essays to motivate healthy competition. This way can decrease the anxiety of using a personal account on social media and increase the sense of formality. Furthermore, we also suggest that the instructor can educate the meaning of knowledge-sharing thoroughly in advance to allow the students to shift their critical points from the evaluation's grade distributions to the knowledge-sharing content.