Usage of Social Media Tools for Collaborative Learning: The Effect on Learning Success With the Moderating Role of Cyberbullying

Abstract

The adoption level of emerging web technologies is rapidly growing in educational settings. Given the widespread popularity of social media, it has become essential to understand and adopt social media sites to develop future educational plans as well as deploy current course material on new technologies. This article addresses the issue of perception and usage of social media from the perspective of student collaborative learning and learner performance by incorporating the Technology Acceptance Model and Constructivism Theory about collaborative learning. By analyzing the results using a Structure Equation Modeling technique, this study found that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived enjoyment all have a significant positive relationship with social media usage. The results indicate that social media serves as a dynamic tool to expedite the development of learning environments by encouraging cooperation and communication among students which reinforce their learning behavior and performance. However, it was found that a negative relationship exists between perceived enjoyment and collaborative learning. Cyberbullying as a moderator was found to be a dampening factor in the positive relationship between collaborative learning and learner performance.