Impact Of Web Technologies On The Student-Lecturer Expert Power Relationship

Expert power is that which “comes from having knowledge and expertise in a particular area” (Nazarko, 2004). In the history of the development of higher education, the relationship between the lecturer and the students has changed because of many different factors. Before the Internet and web revolution, the lecturer was the main source of information for his or her students. The web as a modern source of knowledge is now used universally, and this spreading trend may affect the relationship between the lecturer and his students. Understanding the impact of this change appears to be important for improving teaching techniques. Thus, many studies have focused on the effect on students and lecturers of using Internet and web applications. These studies have widely investigated this impact on students’ achievements and attitude, and have also shown how the role and performance of faculty have changed.
This paper aims to investigate this issue from the students’ perspective: what is the impact of using web resources as a source of knowledge on the student-lecturer relationship? How has the fact that students now gain knowledge from websites affected the relationship with the lecturer as a knowledgeable person, that is, the one with the expert power? The participants were 1661 students from 30 universities/educational institutions. The Teacher Power Use Scale (TPUS) was used to collected data along with an open-ended questionnaire. Predictive Analytics Software (PASW) was used to analyze the data, and a thematic analysis was used to analyze data from the open-ended questionnaire.