Social media in the classroom: examining the effects of social influence mechanism on peer learning

Abstract

Social media is popular in college students’ life. However, there are only a few studies exploring the impact of social media on student relationship, and none of them studied the prevalence of social media by dynamic network analysis. This study developed OpenSlide, a teaching system combining the social function of SlideShare and Youtube as an after-school auxiliary learning tool and analysed the impact of this tool on peer interaction in a classroom by using the advantage of multimedia database management. One of the most widely discussed issues in social network analysis is that both the interaction between individual and network formation comprises two processes: social selection and social influence. This study used the stochastic actor-based model to model the network dynamics of students interact recorded in the system and their face-to-face knowledge discussion networks. Our findings demonstrated that similar social media tools can enhance learning effectiveness, allow knowledge construction across the boundary of class and improve students’ academic achievement while identifying successful strategies for social media development at an early stage.