Collaborative supporting tool: Integrating social media and mobile groupware into an integrated learning environment

摘要

Online collaboration is currently emerging as one of the predominant technology trends in the collaborative learning atmosphere. However, the scarcity of collaborative devices combined with task-specific groupware tools may limit its full potential. In addition, there is a deficiency of investigations in the form of integrated settings between social media and mobile groupware. Therefore, this paper proposes the approach of mobile groupware (MobileMeeting) that can be integrated (i.e., embedded) into the popular social media posts that students currently use as a supplementary tool for collaborative learning. An investigation was conducted in real project-based scenarios with students, followed by post-session questionnaires including a log-report analysis from Google Analytics as supporting evidence. This study confirms that the proposed approach using MobileMeeting is capable of improving collective learning productivity and activities, including their satisfaction with the required groupware tools. The log-report analysis of students' case projects (social media marketing campaigns) also displays an increment in user engagement and retention by bringing the new user and a large number of returning user. In conclusion, these results have several practical implications: as collaborative learning activities become more complex, the setup of integrated social media and mobile groupware (MobileMeeting) can support a range of collective actions.