An Empirical Study on Influencing Factors of Knowledge Sharing in Virtual Learning Community

Abstract

Increasing organizations and educational institutions have implemented virtual learning communities to en- courage knowledge sharing. Virtual Learning Community was able to serve the learning goals of community members by relying on the knowledge sharing. In this paper, some individual factors and environmental factors were used to study the knowledge sharing among community members. In virtual learning community, the sense of community and trust are im- portant indicators for the development of community, and the members of mature community tend to have strong a sense of community and trust. Ten hypothesizes and the way of questionnaire survey were presented to explore the impact of social interaction, perceptual learning, trust, a sense of community and self-efficacy for knowledge sharing among mem- bers in community. The empirical results show that social interaction behavior between members has a significant role in promoting trust and a sense of belonging, and trust, a sense of community and a sense of self-efficacy among members has a significant effect to the knowledge sharing in virtual learning community, while a sense of self-efficacy among members in the virtual learning community is largely affected by the learning community perception.