Understanding the Potentials of Social Media in Collaborative Learning

Abstract

Social media is used daily on many occasions to form communities. More than just being a place for connecting people to larger communities, social media has become a platform technology to enable creating and sharing knowledge. Social media is a potential technology to improve collaborative learning practices. Thus, players in education field should investigate and understand the beneficial use of social media. This chapter illustrates the potential benefits of using social media in collaborative learning. Collaborative learning with social media technology is analyzed with extensive examples from the research studies. These examples are carefully reviewed by providing a critical analysis of the benefits and drawbacks of the social media on learning.