Students’ Perceptions and Acceptance: Lessons from Two Studies on Social Tools on Collaborative and Collective Learning

In recent years, we witness the formation of social spaces in computers and networks where children, youths and young adults learn, play, socialize and participate in civic life. The question we want to ask is: if this participatory culture of user-generated content in which socially constructed and collective intelligence is to be harnessed, what are the critical success factors that determine the acceptance of this participatory culture in the learning environments? As an illustration, the paper describes two studies focused on tertiary students’ perceptions of acceptance of social tools such as Weblogs and instant messaging in facilitating collaborative and collective learning with the aim of tapping onto the collective intelligence of user communities. Congruent to other studies, findings from these two preliminary studies have shown that factors influencing the acceptance of social tools such as Weblogs and instant messaging for learning are dependent on learners’ perceptions of usefulness, followed by usability of the social tools. The paper concludes with design implications for socially constructed, learning environments.