The factors affecting the students' encouragement to use the social network sites as a virtual learning network

Background and Aim: The utilization of technology acceptance model is one of the ways for perceiving the users' attitudes, and this research utilizes it to investigate the factors affecting the students' encouragement to use the social network sites in order to determine which factors encourage the students to use the social network sites as a virtual learning network. Methods: This research is applied in terms of objective and is among the structural equation modeling-partial least square studies. A questionnaire is designed based on conceptual model after investigating the relevant articles and extracting the possible components, and it is then distributed among students, and finally the analysis is done on collected questionnaires. Results: The data analysis results indicate the indirect impact of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and perceived complementarity, and the direct impact of attitude towards using the online social network sites and perceived enjoyment on the students' intention to use the social network sites. Conclusion: The results of this research provide the useful insight for university authorities in local education industry to utilize the social network sites in order to enhance the students' learning effectiveness by perceiving these factors. This study identifies the variables which can affect the development of educational space and investigates the conducted studies on determinates of students' encouragement to use of social networks as e-learning networks, and finally provides an applied comprehensive model by combination of these collected factors. Furthermore, a new research can be conducted on factors affecting the users' encouragement to use social networks for education.