Sharing Student Projects

Social media is widely used and has many educational advantages in various types of organisations, including higher education institutions, and is considered a platform for university students to collaborate and perceive digital social support. The LRB is a widely used platform in China that receives little attention from the education sector. Little is known about which types of students use LRB for collaboration, how they collaborate, and how different modes of collaboration influence their views of digital social support. By creating structural equation modelling (SEM), this thesis uses a quantitative research approach to analyse the relationship between variables. I found three ways in which students collaborate in LRB using questionnaire data from 199 university students in China: information seeking, information sharing, and information co-creation. Students' characteristics, such as self-efficacy and interest, were positively correlated with the three types of collaboration, with higher self-efficacy being more willing to participate in co-creation and higher interest in learning being more willing to share information. In addition to information sharing, the other two types of collaboration were positively connected with students' perceived digital support.

These study's findings encourage future study by demonstrating that learning through social media promotes student collaboration and access to social support, and hence, the use of social media in education deserves additional attention and research.