Evaluating the Quality of Social Media in an Educational Context

Abstract

Social media enhanced learning systems bring new challenges to evaluate learning environments. Many features are common with any web-based services and can be evaluated with common criteria. But with social media services users can also contribute content, change opinions and create communities for different needs, which bring new dimensions to a quality evaluation. This research focused on finding out which are the most important characters and functions in social media enhanced learning system in the context of higher education. The paper also reports the former research results that were used as a background for this study. Earlier researches were carried out in 2008-2009 and they focused on how to evaluate social media services, what are the studentsâ?? expectations and what motivates them to use social media services in higher educational context.