Usable, Aesthetic, Sociable and Motivating Interface for Students' Online Knowledge Sharing

摘要

Online knowledge sharing is an important factor in ensuring students continues learning outside the classroom. The advancement of technology now allows the students' sharing of knowledge to take place regardless of time and place in an online learning environment using an online discussion interface. Efforts have been taken by many higher education institutions to encourage students to share their knowledge in online discussion interface, but however it fails to sustain the knowledge sharing activities. This poses the question of how to promote the knowledge sharing activities among students. While previous research adopted the usability and sociability as antecedents for the online knowledge sharing activities, this study further explores visual aesthetics and intrinsic motivation design as additional two antecedents. We propose a set of contextual gamification and social media strategies which apply selfdetermination theory to self-motivate students for online knowledge sharing. It was found the game and social media elements can motivate the user in the online interface. The implementation of game elements in online interface can engage users while encouraging their activities for learning. Thus intrinsic motivation was designed using a set of gamification and social media specifications to enhance students' self-motivation for knowledge sharing activities. The research model with 53 items was tested for content validity to identify the initial measures for online knowledge sharing. Based on the content validity analysis, 20 items that does not fit into the criteria was discarded from the instrument. Our finding reveals that 33 items from usability, visual aesthetics, sociality and intrinsic motivation design can be used for initial development of online knowledge sharing model.