Share and Share Alike: Integrating Internet Resource Sharing Into Learning

Despite instructors’ concerns, students use “non-scholarly” Internet information resources to address their knowledge gaps or supplement their learning. In this research, students were encouraged to use such Internet resources to complete an individual course assignment and then share those resources to create a group submission. This allowed an investigation of perceived learning and development of social capital measured through quality and quantity. Assignments were introduced into eight courses over three semesters, providing a sample size of 210 undergraduate and graduate students. Two systems, one a social curation site and one the university’s LMS, were evaluated as suitable platforms for such learning activities. Findings suggest that these learning assignments resulted in positive perceptions of learning as well as positive perceptions of the quality and quantity of social capital shared. Student engagement as reflected by the number of resources stored differed by system, suggesting increased student engagement in the social curation system.