Title:
How Students Use Social Software for Learning: A comparative study of Chinese international students and Canadian students in Canada
Abstract Since Canadian education opened the door to a world of opportunities, more and more Chinese students made the choice to study in Canada, representing the largest group of foreign students in the country. The Government of Canada reported that in 2009, Canada welcomed well over 50,000 Chinese students to their colleges and universities. These students use Chinese social software, but they are rarely used Canadian social software before they came to Canada. We are interested in how they use the popular Chinese and Canadian social software to get the connective knowledge in the digital age for their foreign study career.
The purpose of this study is to explore how Chinese international students use social software to learn the graduate and undergraduate programs and live in campus at Canadian Universities. It is to summarize their useful and insufficient experiences of using social software, comparing with local university students. We hope the result of research will help to the future Chinese international students who want to study in Canada, and relative education departments in university who want to develop policies for international students.
We will conduct quantitative and qualitative research on the skills and attitudes of Chinese international university students and Canadian university students in a context of digital age.
Key words: social software, learning, Chinese international students, social learning theories
The purpose of this study is to explore how Chinese international students use social software to learn the graduate and undergraduate programs and live in campus at Canadian Universities. It is to summarize their useful and insufficient experiences of using social software, comparing with local university students. We hope the result of research will help to the future Chinese international students who want to study in Canada, and relative education departments in university who want to develop policies for international students.
We will conduct quantitative and qualitative research on the skills and attitudes of Chinese international university students and Canadian university students in a context of digital age.
Key words: social software, learning, Chinese international students, social learning theories