The Evaluation of Edmodo in Business Reading Class

Several social media have been adopted in the digital 21st-century classroom. Edmodo is one of free social media providing opportunities for students to practice their lessons outside the classroom. In addition, the management of a reading class usually encounters with a large size class and the limited teaching time. The use of e-learning system or Moodle was suggested at Burapha University. However, the university server may not be able to serve large amount of users. This study, therefore, evaluates the use of Edmodo whether it can be equivalent to the use of university Moodle. The subjects were 54 undergraduate students studying Reading in Business English in the academic year 2014. They were divided into 11 sub-groups for their group presentations and other online quizzes. Online observation was used to study the use of Edmodo during the semester whereas close-ended and open-ended questionnaires were distributed at the end of the class to find students' attitudes toward the use of Edmodo as the learning tool in reading class. The findings reveal that students report positive attitudes toward Edmodo in terms of users friendly function and interaction between students and teacher. Hence, the study suggests that teachers may consider the use of Edmodo in their reading class.