Investigating Students’ Feelings and Their Perspectives Toward Web 2.0 Technologies in a Teacher Education Course

The aim of this study was to investigate 57 student teachers’ sense of social presence and their perspectives toward several Web 2.0 technologies, during a 4-year teacher education course in a Taiwan university. The Web 2.0 technologies included blogs, wikis, social networking, social bookmarking, and a virtual world. Gunawardena’s scale was utilized to assess the sense of social presence. Focus-group interviews were conducted to further explore student perspectives and the reasons underlying their feelings. The results of this mixed-method study will provide educators with an analytic framework for Web 2.0 integration, while considering students’ affective state in the use of the technologies.