A Social Network Approach To Blogs: Improving Digital Collaborative Learning

© 40th International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2019. All rights reserved.Blogs as digital collaboration tools are promising resources in higher education to impart knowledge, enhance collaboration and social interaction among students and thus, to increase their success. Despite the widespread use of blogs, little is known about blogs' impact on students' social networks and its effect on learning success. Therefore, based on a social network perspective, we empirically assess the change in the social network of 51 blog users. We are among the first to investigate the influence of the social network's characteristics on students' subjectively perceived performance and access to knowledge within a blog-learning environment. We find evidence that blogs significantly increase the students' social networks, but are primarily a medium for reinforcing what the student has learned rather than influencing performance related outcomes. Our results yield important practical and theoretical recommendations on how blogs can be used to enhance students' social networks and in turn increase their success.