An Analysis of Social Collaboration and Networking Tools in eLearning

Many online learning websites and learning management systems (LMS) provide social collaboration and networking tools to aid learning and to interact with peers for knowledge sharing. The benefit of collaborating with each other is certainly undeniable, such tools, however, can be a distraction from the actual tasks for learners. The paper presents a study on social media tools supported by various eLearning systems to understand the impact on students learning activities. A survey questionnaire is designed for this purpose. The data is collected from students who have had experience using different massive open online course (MOOC) eLearning platforms and LMS from various universities. The results of the survey indicate that more than 95% of the participants use at least one of the social tools in their daily life activities, and almost 84% of them have used these tools in connection with the eLearning systems. It is also interesting to note that 92% of the participants intend to use social tools for study purposes. The results indicate that there is a need to integrate more of these social media tools into eLearning systems.