Abstract
Background: Social media platforms are thriving on the co-creation of content, usually socially orientated content about the social interests of participants. There is also a growing trend of social media application in the human resources and marketing for business purposes. This study investigates factors that have an impact on the sharing of knowledge on social media platforms, particularly students at an Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution.Objective: This study evaluates the difference between direct and indirect benefit exchange expected by students when sharing knowledge.Method: Random and theoretical sampling were used to select the sample in this study from the population. A literature-informed questionnaire was used as an instrument to collect data from a selected sample of 315 students from the School of Computing at the University of South Africa.Results: A test of association was conducted to evaluate correlations, which revealed that only reputation and social language correlate with direct and indirect benefit exchange. Results indicate that there is a significant mean difference between direct and indirect benefit exchange and that issues concerning social identity and trust should be taken into account when developing social media instructional design.Conclusion: In this study, a survey was used to test the hypothesis. The authors concluded that instructional designer can design teaching and learning experience in the social media platform by catering for both direct and indirect benefit knowledge exchange. The results of the study further confirmed that some students share knowledge with the expectation of direct exchange benefit and, meanwhile, expect indirect exchange benefit.
Highlights
The University of South Africa (UNISA) is an Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution of higher learning, where students have an option to share knowledge either directly or indirectly by means of social media, in this case Wikis, microblog and discussion forum
As far as the researchers are aware, there is no study that focuses on the investigation of social factors that have an influence on the educational use of social media in developing countries, in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region
Each factor was named in relation to the group of items that make up the specific factor
Summary
The University of South Africa (UNISA) is an Open Distance Learning (ODL) institution of higher learning, where students have an option to share knowledge either directly or indirectly by means of social media, in this case Wikis, microblog and discussion forum. It is not yet clear what leads to a student’s willingness to directly or indirectly exchange knowledge on the social network platform. This study focuses on the investigation of factors that influence students’ decision to share knowledge directly or indirectly with their fellow students in the ODL environment, using social media platforms. The researchers will investigate the impact of social factors, such as reputation, social identity and trust, and shared language in direct and indirect exchange of knowledge with students
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