Abstract—In recent years, social technologies have been widely used by teenagers on a daily basis. More specifically, online social networks are becoming increasingly more popular in societies in general and university campuses in particular. Previous research shows that online social networking may have impact on students’ learning. However, it is not clear how online social networking affect student learning and to what extent it affects learning outcomes. Based on social presence and social learning theories, we carry out an empirical study to examine how online social networking affect student learning. Our survey results indicate that online social networking activities promote students’ perceived social presence, and hence positively influence the intensity of online knowledge sharing and knowledge discovery. As a result, both students’ perceived learning satisfaction and learning outcomes have been improved. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study which tries to explain how online social networking enhance student learning through the lens of social learning and knowledge management theories.

Index Terms—Online Social Networks, Social Learning, Social Presence, Learning Effectiveness.

Raymond Y. K. Lau is with the Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China (e-mail: raylau@ cityu.edu.hk).

Cite: Raymond Y. K. Lau, "An Empirical Study of Online Social Networking for Enhancing University Students’ Learning," International Journal of e-Education, e-Business, e-Management and e-Learning vol. 2, no. 5, pp.425-428, 2012.