What does contribute to successful integration of social media in higher education?

Social media has become an important communication channel in higher education and provides unique affordances to support effective and rich collaboration among learners (Bogdanov et al., 2012). While accumulating evidence supports educational affordances of social media (e.g., Fouser, 2010; Shin & Chon, 2013), there is still insufficient knowledge regarding instructional strategies to increase learners? satisfaction and continued intention to use social media for learning. In the present study, we adapted the Information System Success Model (DeLone & McLean, 2003) and investigated how features of social media (i.e., system quality and service quality) and learners? experience (i.e., sense of community and flow) influence learners? satisfaction and continued intention to use. The data was collected from a large lecture class (N = 310) in a 4-year university in South Korea, where students collaboratively worked as a small group (7?8 per group) throughout the semester, and the instructor encouraged them to use social media of their choice (e.g., Facebook, Twitter). All instruments use 5-point Likert type scale, and they demonstrated acceptable reliability supported by the Cronbach?s alpha values of .91 for sense of community, .87 for system quality, .78 for service quality, .90 for satisfaction, .79 for intention to use, and .90 for flow. Following the two-step approach (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988), we examined the measurement model of the model (i.e., how adequately the measurements capture the underlying construct), and it demonstrated an acceptable fit (TLI = .99, CFI = .99, and RMSEA = .04). The final model obtained from removing a couple of non-significant paths indicates that sense of community, system and service quality of social media positively influence learners? flow experience, which also mediates satisfaction. System and service quality of social media directly influence learners? satisfaction while only system quality affects learners? continued intention to use social media. Learners? satisfaction also positively influences their intention to use social media. We can drive instructional strategies that facilitate successful integration of social media. First, the instructor needs to carefully consider various instructional strategies of how to increase sense of community and choose social media with high levels of system and service quality to enhance learners? flow experience and satisfaction. Second, the selected social media should offer various functions that can be readily used to promote collaborative learning (e.g., sharing resources and group discussions).