Analyzing factors influencing student engagement in an educative social media platform

In the context of Social Media literacy, the success of educational interventions relies on designing motivational learning environments that seek students’ engagement. Despite existing achievements in social media education to include more appealing resources (e.g. gamification, authentic learning, interactive simulations), limited research has explored the factors that influence students’ engagement. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence engagement in an educational social media platform. Specifically, the factors that shape interest and enjoyment in Instareal, an educational tool that combines narrative scripts and collaborative learning flow patterns to educate teenagers about social media risks and challenges. To answer our research questions, we analyze the log data generated by high school students (N = 100) who tested a Social Media Literacy training with the support of Instareal. A factor analysis and a backward stepwise regression is performed over a dataset containing students’ traces of online activities and social interactions. The results show that factors such as the social participation of the students (comments, likes), curiosity (opening profiles, following others), and the quality of their answers influence interest and enjoyment within the platform. The results of this study offer new insights into measuring and enhancing student engagement when using educational social media environments.