TY - JOUR
T1 - An Empirical Study of the Relationship Between Social Networking Sites and Students’ Engagement in Higher Education
AU - Koranteng, Felix N.
AU - Wiafe, Isaac
AU - Kuada, Eric
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - This article investigates how students’ online social networking relationships affect knowledge sharing and how the intensity of knowledge sharing enhances students’ engagement. It adopts the social capital theory as the basis for investigation, and the partial least square structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypothesized model. Responses from 586 students in higher education were analyzed. The findings provided empirical evidence which contradicts the argument that students perceive social networking sites as an effective tool for learning. Also, contrary to previous studies which posit that knowledge sharing impacts engagement, it was observed that there is no relationship between the two. However, as social networking sites differ in terms of member behavior norms, it is envisaged that if a similar study is conducted and limited to a specific academically inclined social networking site such as Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Mendeley, and so on, different findings may be observed.
AB - This article investigates how students’ online social networking relationships affect knowledge sharing and how the intensity of knowledge sharing enhances students’ engagement. It adopts the social capital theory as the basis for investigation, and the partial least square structural equation modeling was used to examine the hypothesized model. Responses from 586 students in higher education were analyzed. The findings provided empirical evidence which contradicts the argument that students perceive social networking sites as an effective tool for learning. Also, contrary to previous studies which posit that knowledge sharing impacts engagement, it was observed that there is no relationship between the two. However, as social networking sites differ in terms of member behavior norms, it is envisaged that if a similar study is conducted and limited to a specific academically inclined social networking site such as Academia.edu, ResearchGate, Mendeley, and so on, different findings may be observed.
KW - higher education
KW - knowledge sharing
KW - social capital theory
KW - social networking sites
KW - students’ engagement
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85049860662&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0735633118787528
DO - 10.1177/0735633118787528
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85049860662
SN - 0735-6331
VL - 57
SP - 1131
EP - 1159
JO - Journal of Educational Computing Research
JF - Journal of Educational Computing Research
IS - 5
ER -