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Experimental evaluation of a socially-enhanced collaborative learning tool based on the facebook platform

Abstract:

Facebook was conceived with a social purpose but, in the last few years, its influence over collaborative learning processes has been broadly studied. However, there is no consensus about its positive or negative impact on the academic performance of students. In this scenario, our intention is to customize social media for collaborative learning through the construction of a Facebook application. This is an original idea since no other studies, found in the area, consider customizing Facebook for the actual coupling of social media with learning tools. This way, we intend to fill in the existing gap between Facebook and collaborative learning in higher education. In this paper, we present the results of a quantitative evaluation of the impact of a socially-enhanced collaborative learning tool on the students' performance. An experiment was carried out during one month. 69 students of Software Engineering participated in the study. The obtained results suggest that the improvement of the students' performance is significant when a custom Facebook application, designed for collaborative learning programs, is used. This findings are statistically supported by a P-value of 2, 84×10-4. Nevertheless, a broader study should be carried out in order to elucidate the latent constructs involved in these dynamics.