The Efficacy of Using Social Applications (Google Hangouts) to Enhance Team-based Learning

Abstract

Business instructors have been embracing team-based learning activities (e.g. case study and group project) because they expose students to divergent ideas, increase their learning interests, and help them develop new understanding of different subjects. However, social applications are emerging to threaten the effectiveness of team-based learning because college students are spending more time in using them for social purposes, and less time in using them for educational purpose. A lot of evidence has shown that students who spend more time using social media tend to score lower grades. In face of these team-based learning issues influenced by social media use, a growing number of educators are exploring the possibility of using group-based social applications to enhance learning effectiveness for college students. The purpose of this study is to examine the efficacy of group social applications for international team-based learning. We invited 28 students in an online class to participate in our experiment. These students lived in different countries and were divided into 7 teams. All students took a 10-minute training to learn how to use Google Hangouts, a cloud-based social application enabling students to have real-time group conversations. After the training was complete, each team participated in a discussion of information technology topics in a class for 20 minutes. After the discussion was complete, students were asked to complete a questionnaire and report their experience of the team-based learning. SmartPLS was used to test the relationship of six constructs related to the experience. The test result indicated that positive confirmation experience has the largest influence on student satisfaction, followed by continuance intention. As for the antecedents of confirmation experiences, system quality has the largest influence, followed by perceived performance, and perceived playfulness. However, perceived playfulness has no significant influence on confirmation experience. These findings are encouraging for business educators who are interested in pursuing social application-enabled team learning. Practical and theoretical implications are drawn from these findings.