Students attitudes towards collaborative tools in a virtual learning environment

Our aim in this study is to investigate the prep class university students' attitudes towards collaborative tools used in Moodle. Also it was aimed to find whether there is a difference in the students' attitudes towards traditional activities and collaborative ones.The participants of the study, 28 non-English major university students, who had three-hours of Self Access Centre lessons per week, used a virtual learning environment named 'Moodle' for 2 hours each week.In order to investigate the attitudes, the participants were administered a computer readiness scale at the beginning of the study. At the end, one questionnaire was administred, and to support the data the screenshots of the activities were taken and twelve participants were interviewed. The results show that the collaborative tools in virtual learning environment have significant positive effects according to the participants' opinions.The students significantly have positive attitudes towards the collaborative tools although they have not had enough experience of collaborative work. Also the students do not reflect positive attitudes towards traditional activities and do not use them a lot accordingly. Key Words:Virtual Learning Environment, Collaborative Tools, Students' Attitude