Online social networking practices and the implications for e-learning solutions

Social Networking has changed the way people communicate and share information over the last decade. Today, over one billion people worldwide have signed up to share information over a social network. Likewise, eLearning has been utilized by academic communities since the 1990´s to transcend learning across space and time to offer students an alternative to physical classrooms. Although many studies boast about the benefits of eLearning, users have traditionally complained about usability. This study aims to analyze the frequency of online social networking practices across a broad spectrum of diverse users based on survey responses. The goal of this research is to investigate the frequency of usage of social networking features for consideration in the design of new eLearning solutions.