ABSTRACT

The new Web 2.0 trends have offered new tools to connect people not only to digital knowledge repositories but also to other people, in order to share ideas, collaboratively create new forms of dynamic learning content, get effective support, and learn with and from peers. Different types of collaborative content applications, such as blogs and wikis, are used by people of all ages, supporting the collaborative creation and sharing of knowledge among young and old, students and experts, inside and outside organizations and educational institutions. This research investigates the effects of Web 2.0 and social networks on students’ performance in online education which uses networking as an adjunct mode for enhancing traditional education in King Abdulaziz University.

1. Introduction

Social learning takes place in relation to four dimensions: action, reflection, communication and negotiation [1]. Each of these processes is characterized by particular tensions. Social learning therefore is about finding optimal and dynamic balances between these tensions, in accordance with the peculiar conditions and needs of concrete contexts and challenges [1]. Nowadays, students forced educational institutions to move from traditional teaching methods to social learning. Higher education students are integrating ICT completely in their everyday life and call for educational institutions to support their digital learning styles. In addition, instructors are increasingly taking up social computing applications in their work and free time. One approach is to provide support for social learning by integrating Web 2.0 tools in educational settings.

As a result, traditional teaching and learning methods in educational institutions should be adapted to provide accommodation the learning needs of the new generation of digital native students and instructors. Recently, Web 2.0 concepts have started to open new doors for more effective learning and have the potential to overcome many of the limitations of traditional learning models. Social computing tools in Web 2.0 have a potential to support both, students in higher education institutions and instructors updating their skills in new ways. In this paper, we show in which way the Web 2.0 tools, under development at the King Abdulaziz University, puts crucial success factors for Web 2.0 enhanced learning into practice, applying well known concepts like social learning.

U-learning is a learning paradigm which takes place in a ubiquitous computing environment that enables learning the right thing at the right place and time in the right way [2]. Following Ogata [3], social learning is defined as one of U-learning which is defined as follows:

• Permanency: The information remains and learners can never lose their work unless the learners purposely remove it.

• Accessibility: The information is always available whenever the learners need to use it. Learners have access to their documents, data, or videos from anywhere.

• Immediacy: The information can be retrieved immediately by the learners wherever they are.

• Interactivity: The learners can interact with peers, teachers, and experts efficiently and effectively.

We use Facebook and blogs as tools of social network learning. By browsing the nominated noble works and the comments made by peers as well as instructors on students’ blogs, students are empowered to stimulate new ideas different from each other. This paper moves to additional concludes that blogging has the potential to be a transformational technology for teaching and learning.

Our survey results show that students who took the traditional courses are satisfied with blog posting, getting instructor’s in-class interactions and social learning.

2. Related Work

Nowadays, Web 2.0 technology is taking part in the environment of learning and knowledge transfer by transforming the information society into a knowledge society [4]. There are several scholars doing researches on the prospective role of Web 2.0 services [5] in providing social interaction with educational values included [6]. The results of an experiment by Anderson [4] proved that the social network of Web 2.0 services are described by power laws and log normal distributions, and also proved that a small percentage of participants remain active above the threshold required for the interaction’s continuance and development.

Researchers are used methods of Web 2.0 analysis [7], to study how information flows through network, how people acquire information and resources. Accordingly, they are studying for discovering densely-knit classes and looking for cohesive subclasses [8]. Wright [9] defined a blog as a website which contains posts, or text. These contents are classified to classes and categorized as stack in a chronological order.

Some researchers see that keeping in touch with social science will be just as important like technology. Ronald found that the analysis of the social network [10] helps in identifying the framework of the collaborative learning. In the same idea, Peter tries to analysis information coming from the blogs and analysis the relevance of an item [11]. Newman [12] has mentioned that social network has debatably turned into an obvious subject as regards to researchers, learning activities and collaborative learning. Oravec [13] found that the blog has a lot of extents that are suited to students’ allowing them, and encouraging them to become more engaged in the class. Blogging tools are already commenced in a lot of university around the world. However, Oravec found that few of the blogs in education are used in-class [13]. Dailey [14,15] considers that the biggest advantage of blogs has more to do with traditional classroom.

This paper, quantitative analysis will be conducted to examine the effects of social learning of educational blogs in the classroom settings.

3. Methodology

Using data from a 100-student course on communication skills at a King Abdul Aziz university, we empirically tested how social networks (friendly, advising, and adversarial) related to students’ performance. A study was performed for students enrolled in two sections of the course. The survey was conducted on-line using electronic questionnaires at Deanship of distance learning King Abdulaziz University. The representation of respondents by gender was 60 girls and 40 boys. The questionnaire was designed to measure the performance of the social network variables on the student collaboration. Following the work of Sparrowe et al. [16], advice relations could be administered to acquire a more trustworthy measure of the advice network.

This research is based as the following hypothesis: Social network performance will be positively related to the student’s satisfaction. Accordingly the above hypothesis can be consisted from the following sub questioners:

H1.1: Social network using blog and Facebook provide a satisfying learning experience.

H1.2: Using social network tools I found this class is more satisfying than most other classes.

H1.3; Using social network tools, I found this class is an interesting one H1.4: Class via social network gives me flexibility for extracurricular H1.5: Class via social network gives me flexibility for study time H1.6: I am feeling to getting a good education.

H1.7: The technology of social network associated with class is easy to use H1.8: Using social network, it is easy to get feedback.

The survey included numerous scales to evaluate the constructs of interest. For that, the scales were measured using a 7-point Likert type scale anchored with the statements “Strongly Disagree” = 1, “Strongly Agree” = 7, and “Neutral” as the mid-point.

4. Results and Discussions

The result was analyzed and tested using LISREL [17]. Table 1 shows the results with T-value and P-value.

A shown in table 1, and Figure 1, a t-test was used to explain the value of the results of 8 questions and gives the respondents on level of satisfaction with the social network. It is clear that there is significant effect for social network satisfaction with P < 0.011. Students in this study are generally satisfied with course online via social network learning. As shown in T-value, the students find that the social network tools, I found this class is an interesting class.

Student found that class via social network gives them flexibility for study time with factor loading 0.934. As shown in figure 2, they also found that the technology of social network associated with class is easy to use with 0.011. Figure 2 shows that the best results get from Q4 and Q6, therefore, they found that class via social network gives students flexibility for extracurricular and

they are feeling to getting a good education. As shown in Figure 1, most of participates agree that class via social network gives me flexibility for extracurricular.

Figure 3 presents also that Q3 reflect a best question where students found that social network tools, they found this class is an interesting one.