Mikael Billfors Gustavsson & Joakim Kalcidis

KTH Social - students expectations of a new social learning platform

Abstract

In early 2011, the Royal Institute of Technology officially launched KTH Social. A social media with the aim to make it easier for students and teachers to communicate regarding studies. We wanted to see how students can become more motivated to participate at KTH Social. For the basis of our work, we used theories of incentives and motivation at online communities that we summarized and developed to a self made incentive model. We examined students views about the service by implementing a focus group and distributing questionnaires. The questionnaires were formative in our conclusions. The survey reveals that students are becoming increasingly motivated about the service to facilitate their needs, helping their personal development in their studies and also support the exchange of information between students themselves and with teachers. The study also shows that students are looking for a central platform of learning and has hopes of KTH Social acting as such. The purpose of this work is that the results should serve as basis for the development of KTH Social to a social media where students are active and satisfied users.