This article describes an investigation into the level of satisfaction among students at Spain's National Distance Education University (UNED) regarding use of Facebook groups as an environment for learning. Based on a structural equation methodology, the research analyzed the most relevant personal and socio-educational factors that affect…

This paper describes the functionality, scalability, and cost of implementing and maintaining a suite of open source technologies, which have supported hundreds of thousands of learners in the past year, on an information technology infrastructure budget of less than US$10,000 per year. In addition, it reviews pedagogical opportunities offered by…

Although educational practitioners have adopted social media to their online or mobile communities, little attention has been paid to investigate the social media messages related to online or mobile learning. The purpose of this research is to identify social media influencers and trends by mining Twitter posts related to online learning and…

The main objective of this study was to analyse the influence of social media participation on academic performance. The sample consisted of 1960 students taking one of two courses at undergraduate or postgraduate level, respectively (Faculty of Education, National Distance Education University, Spain), of whom 411 students carried out an activity…

This paper critically reviews literature on the role of Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) applications, such as WhatsApp, in supporting learning and teaching practice. Using formal qualitative synthesis as its methodology, and dialectical theory as an analytical framework, our main objective was to identify tensions, affordances, constraints, and…

Teachers participate in social networking sites to share knowledge and collaborate with other teachers to create education-related content. In this study we selected several communities in order to better understand the networks that these participants establish in Twitter and the role that the social network plays in their activity within the…

Today's learners can easily share their thoughts on their social networks, and this movement, undoubtedly, has been affecting their learning. However, learners in such an ad hoc social network environment need a deliberate design to support their idea sharing and concept exchange. Gaining insights into how to stimulate concept sharing in a social…

The advancement of mobile communication technology has contributed to an increasingly interconnected world; however, these devices are not being used as effectively as they could be to improve global challenges. One challenging issue is the lack of preparation college graduates receive to positively contribute to the needs of an interdependent…

YouTube is one of the most prevalent social media sites across the globe. However, there is a lack of research on factors influencing educational use of YouTube. This study examines high school students' educational use of YouTube with unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). Using structural equation modeling, the proposed…

Digital curation may be regarded as a core competency in higher education since it contributes to establishing a sense of metaliteracy (an essential requirement for optimally functioning in a modern media environment) among students. Digital curation is gradually finding its way into higher education curricula aimed at fostering social media…

With its total number of users (around 62 million) throughout the world, it is important to determine the views of academics who use Edmodo (the leading SLN). In this respect in the first part of this two-part research, the purpose was to examine academics' (n = 50) use of technology and social networks. As for the purpose of the second part, it…

While ubiquitous in everyday use, in reality, social media usage within higher education teaching has expanded quite slowly. Analysis of social media usage of students and instructors for teaching, learning, and research purposes across four countries (Russia, Turkey, Germany, and Switzerland) showed that many higher education instructors actively…

The aim of this paper is to present the learning and teaching styles using the Social Learning Environment (SLE), which was developed based on the computer supported collaborative learning approach. To avoid burdening learners with multiple platforms and tools, SLE was designed and developed in order to integrate existing systems, institutional…

The paper investigates the impact of virtual environmental characteristics such as collaboration, communication, and resource sharing on social media adoption by the academic community at the university level. Building on the social constructivist paradigm and technology acceptance model, we propose a conceptual model to assess social media…

Social media is increasingly becoming an essential platform for social connectivity in our daily lives. The availability of mobile technology has further fueled its importance -- making it a ubiquitous tool for social interaction. However, limited studies have been conducted to investigate roles of social participation in this field. Thus, the…