The Impact of Knowledge Sharing Through Facebook on Students’ Academic Performance in Palestine

Abstract

In this study, we seek to examine the factors that affect knowledge sharing via online social networks and its impact on students’ academic performance in educational environment. The study sample was made up of 60 undergraduate students attending the accounting principles classes at Palestine Technical University. We applied the structural equation model to identify the factors that may motivate these students to share their knowledge via social network, specifically Facebook, for educational purposes. The results show that altruism and knowledge self-efficacy are the main factors that influence students to share their knowledge while trust and reputation are not motivators for students to share knowledge via social media. In addition, the result of this study reports that knowledge sharing via social networks has a strong impact on students’ academic performance. The factors affecting students' knowledge sharing can differ between different people and context, therefore, future research could examine the differences in social networks participation based on gender, age, education level or subject. Based on the findings, recommendations are made about using Facebook in education.