Abstract
Globally, higher education (HE) institutions now implement some element of hybrid learning, heightened since the COVID-19 pandemic and temporary shift to online learning. To communicate, online self-disclosure (revealing information about the self) is required. The majority of HE students are aged between 18-24 years, which is considered the developmentally sensitive period of ‘emerging adulthood’. Having only ever known a digitally-connected world, emerging adults self-disclose differently to other generations when communicating via an online environment. Whilst communicating online with HE staff, students may self-disclose in a way that misaligns with the expectations of staff; this may result in miscommunication or over-disclosure (revealing inappropriate information to a misjudged audience). Over-disclosing via online educational platforms (e.g., Moodle, MS Teams, and e-mail) may result in negative feedback from staff and this may impact student experience, engagement and attainment. Problematically, no standardized measure exists that captures student self-disclosure via online educational platforms and so research on this topic is currently limited and theoretically unstable. Via a three-phase study, comprising four studies and 283 participants, we have created and conducted an initial evaluation of the online self-disclosure via educational platforms (OSDEP) scale. The OSDEP scale is the first psychometric tool to specifically measure HE students’ online self-disclosure behaviors specifically within an online educational context. The OSDEP scale can be used for future educational and pedagogical research to further understand HE students’ online self-disclosure behaviors and to what extent these may be associated with topics such as mental health, engagement, attainment, and student experience.
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Article Type: Research Article
Journal of Digital Educational Technology, Volume 4, Issue 2, July 2024, Article No: ep2416
https://doi.org/10.30935/jdet/14789
Publication date: 09 Jul 2024
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