Relative Social Media Impacts on College Students’ Communication Actions in Team Learning

Many people are widely using social media in their personal and professional lives, and educators are interested in integrating it into the classroom. Social media has the potential to enhance dialogue and collaboration, and facilitate the creation and sharing of information as well. Especially, students are expected to use social media differently for their communication purpose in team-based learning. The purposes of this study is to examine the relative impact of social media on team learning activities. The authors investigated preferred social media types and their effects on communication in team-based learning. Data collection was carried out through an online survey and a total of 5,607 students responded to a questionnaire. Subsequently, multiple regression analysis was used to identify the different impact of social media on three types of communication actions in team-based learning. Students preferred immediate and synchronous communication using chat applications on mobile phones. Chat applications on mobile phones influenced all communication types (i.e. information selection, information transmission, and information acquisition). Social networking tools and file sharing services significantly affect information transmission and information acquisition. This paper provides a different perspective of how social media applicatios used as a form of learning technology affects communication actions in team leaning while also giving an insightful guideline to educators that can use social media activities to enhance teaching and learning.