University Students’ Readiness for Using Digital Media and Online Learning—Comparison between Germany and the USA
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article “University Students Readiness for Using Digital Media and Online Learning—Comparison between YYY and ZZZ” deals with the very important and timely subject and is within the thematic area of the journal Education Sciences. The development and advancement of the COVID-19 pandemic would require changes in all fields and sectors, as well as university education and teaching mechanisms. In this sense, the article could contribute to a better understanding of possible preconditions to be met before implementing online teaching. However, there are several important issues to be considered before any publication. Most of these issues pertain to the methods used by the authors, and especially its presentation.
Firstly, I do not understand “cloaking” the countries’ names throughout the article. I believe they do not compromise the identity of author(s), and it would be very useful to get to know this information as well as some more detailed country specifics related to the subject. Further on, the country names were left in graphical figures and therefore provided the major methodological problem in the article. The author(s) is/are comparing the results of students from Germany and US based on too-small samples of students within very specific scientific fields. Not to mention than only in the last paragraph of the entire article we find out that the author(s) is/are comparing students from one university in Germany to sample referring to the USA in general – which is represented by only around 180 students (approximation based on data provided on p.8). The presentation of the results would implicate representative samples of both countries, but the existing information ensures no such possible generalisations. The author(s) should be more careful in offering broad conclusions.
Further on, the author(s) should stress from the beginning that they are dealing with a very small and non-representative sample and that the provided results should be taken in consideration merely as an illustration, or as specific only to a selected group of students. So, the main aim of the article and methodology should be reconstructed to meet this goal.
The second issue is the one related to the study field of surveyed students. For the German case, they were all in educational sciences and could maybe be more distant to using technology during their studying. It would be valuable to see whether there are some differences between these students and students studying computer sciences or any study within the STEM field (or some other scientific field). I understand that the fieldwork has been done, but at least the theoretical part should provide some information whether these differences have been anywhere measured and determined and should they be expected.
Another shortcoming of the method is measuring the attitudes towards digital literacy and ICT competence only by accessing students online. Even though it is to presume that most of the nowadays students are ICT competent and use different digital devices continuously, maybe there are some differences which could be detected only by face-to-face surveys.
Finally, the author(s) should consider more impersonal tone of writing, especially in the introductory and concluding sections of the article.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your feedback and the thorough analysis of our article, especially your remarks on the methodology and discussion of the article. This helped us in improving our work. We have tried to respond to all your comments and recommendations. Please find attached our reply to your review.
Kind regards,
The authors
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This is an interesting study but there are some issues that need to be addressed if it is to be considered for publication.
- There are numerous poorly constructed sentences that detract from the content the authors are presenting. Please ensure that this paper is edited by a natural English speaker.
- The introduction to the paper needs to be strengthened so it includes more current research on the use of different digital tools.
- As this study included participants from different countries, there needs to be some discussion on the potential cross-cultural differences.
- I did not realise until I saw the figures that xxx and yyy referred to students in different countries. This should have been stated in the participants section in the methodology. How many xxx students were approached to complete the online survey?
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your feedback and the thorough analysis of our article. We have tried to respond to all your concerns and hope to have improved the paper, especially introduction and discussion sections. Please find attached our full reply to your review.
Kind regards,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
A study of special relevance is presented due to the topic addressed. After analyzing the manuscript, I recommend that the authors make the following observations:
-Reformulate the abstract presented. All this with the purpose of making the research objective, the number of participants, the research design carried out, as well as the main conclusions reached more specific.
-The first three paragraphs of the introduction must be supported by scientific publications. For the statements on line 30, I recommend that the authors read the following impact articles:
Pozo-Sánchez, S.; López-Belmonte, J.; Moreno-Guerrero, A.-J.; Sola-Reche, J.M.; Fuentes-Cabrera, A. Effect of Bring-Your-Own-Device Program on Flipped Learning in Higher Education Students. Sustainability 2020, 12, 3729. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093729
Moreno-Guerrero, A.-J.; Romero-Rodríguez, J.-M.; López-Belmonte, J.; Alonso-García, S. Flipped Learning Approach as Educational Innovation in Water Literacy. Water 2020, 12, 574. https://doi.org/10.3390/w12020574
López-Núñez, J.A.; López-Belmonte, J.; Moreno-Guerrero, A.J.; Pozo-Sánchez, S. Effectiveness of Innovate Educational Practices with Flipped Learning and Remote Sensing in Earth and Environmental Sciences—An Exploratory Case Study. Remote Sens. 2020, 12, 897. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs12050897
-The participants section must contain the type of sampling carried out by the researchers.
-The results section is adequate and the results are presented clearly (although the authors should improve the quality of the figures).
-The manuscript should conclude with a more complete section on theoretical and practical implications, derived from the present study. That is, to present to the readers the prospects of the investigation.
-The literature analyzed and presented in the manuscript is adequate but not mostly current, for this reason I recommend the inclusion of current references on the topic addressed.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your feedback and the thorough analysis of our article. We have tried to respond to all your concerns and hope to have improved the paper, especially abstract and introduction sections. Please find attached our full reply to your review.
Kind regards,
The authors
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Authors should check the reference numbers, since Pajares in the text appears as [21],while in the bibliography it is number 22. From that number they must review all, since they are all incorrectly indicated.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your feedback and the analysis of our article. We have corrected the references.
Kind regards,
The authors
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Authors should check the reference numbers, since Pajares in the text appears as [21], |
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Answer: Thank you for this comment, we corrected this mistake. |
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The author(s) has/have accepted the proposed remarks about the article “University Students Readiness for Using Digital 2 Media and Online Learning—Comparison between 3 Germany and the USA” and the introduced changes have greatly contributed to clarity and presentation of the conducted research study. There are two minor remarks which could contribute further improvement of the manuscript prior to publication:
- If it is possible, the scale reliability values for Germany should also be included in Table 1.
- The “problem” with the representativeness of the sample - the author(s) write in the section l216-218: “The group of German students in this study is comparable to other student teachers all over Germany. This led to the assumption, that the participants can be seen as represent an exemplary and valuable sample of German students. However, the data should not be seen in the sense of generalization.“ I would suggest removal of the word „represent“ since in linguistic sense this represents a bit unclear sentence formulation – the sentence is more clear if you state: “… the participants can be seen as an exemplary and valuable sample of German students... “ Also, it is not provided with enough data and evidence to state that the sample is representative of the entire student population in Germany.
In line with this remark, the sentence in the Discussion (l318) would be more correct if the author(s) state that "…the study can be characteristic/indicative/illustrative (instead of representative) for both educational systems and teaching and learning cultures and can show important indications".
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thanks for the revision of our manuscript. We have tried to respond to your three recommendations in order to improve the article.
Following you will see our reply to your review.
Kind regards,
The authors
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If it is possible, the scale reliability values for Germany should also be included in Table 1. |
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Answer: Thank you for this comment. We inserted the scale reliability values for Germany in Table 1. |
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The “problem” with the representativeness of the sample - the author(s) write in the section l216-218: “The group of German students in this study is comparable to other student teachers all over Germany. This led to the assumption, that the participants can be seen as represent an exemplary and valuable sample of German students. However, the data should not be seen in the sense of generalization.“ I would suggest removal of the word „represent“ since in linguistic sense this represents a bit unclear sentence formulation – the sentence is more clear if you state: “… the participants can be seen as an exemplary and valuable sample of German students... “ Also, it is not provided with enough data and evidence to state that the sample is representative of the entire student population in Germany. |
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Answer: Thank you for this comment. In line 216-218 we, as suggested, deleted the word “represent” in the sentence. |
| In line with this remark, the sentence in the Discussion (l318) would be more correct if the author(s) state that "…the study can be characteristic/indicative/illustrative (instead of representative) for both educational systems and teaching and learning cultures and can show important indications". |
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Answer: Thank you for this comment. In line 381, we replaced “representive” by inserting “characteristic”. |
Reviewer 2 Report
I am satisfied that the author/s have made the changes that I requested.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your effort in reviewing this manuscript.
The authors
