Chul Park, Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, presented his research at the 2019 Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) Conference on Thursday, October 17. The annual conference, held this year in Los Angeles, Calif., aims to improve public service education around the world.
The title of the presentation was “Use of communication technology between students and faculty for online public service education: The case of Piazza.”
For this research, Park and Ramesh Muthukumarana, an instructional designer at the University of Arkansas System eVersity, employed mixed methods design and analyzed both quantitative and qualitative data. One of the main findings is that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between the use of communication technology by students and their academic performance.
“It means that communication technology like Piazza, a free and user-friendly mobile app for education, can be used to improve students’ academic performance,” Park said.
Park noted that his research project is at an early stage and recently finished preliminary analysis for the conference presentation. He and Muthukumarana will continue work on it for journal submission.
“As an assistant professor and online instructor at the Clinton School, I’m dedicated to its online program, so I wanted to get new insights into online education from this conference,” Park said. “I also wanted to share my experience and empirical findings from three online courses I taught at the Clinton School.”
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