Coordinated Implicitly? An Empirical Study on the Role of Social Media in Collaborative Learning

As social media is widely adopted in collaborative learning, which places teams in a virtual environment, it is critical for teams to identify and leverage the knowledge of their members. Yet little is known about how social media influences teams to coordinate their knowledge and collaborate effectively. In this research, we explore the roles of two kinds of social media activity – information processing and social connection in teamwork – by applying communication and transactive memory systems (TMSs) as the mechanisms of explicit and implicit coordination respectively. More...