SN‐Learning: An exploratory study beyond e‐learning and evaluation of its applications using EV‐SNL framework

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Social networks have intruded in human life by providing new technological innovations in a range of fields, including the education. The use of social networks in education has the potential to extend e‐learning and to introduce new forms of tutoring, communication, and collaboration between students and instructors. Thus, e‐learning is the threshold of Social Networking‐based Learning (SN‐Learning). SN‐Learning consists of a new term, introduced in this paper, and involves e‐learning systems with social networking characteristics or learning through social networking platforms. To this direction, the main objective of this paper is to present this new technological advancement emerged nowadays and to evaluate relevant applications of the last decade using our adjusted evaluation framework, EV‐SNL, in order to highlight their strengths and weaknesses regarding digital learning. The major finding is that SN‐Learning systems focus mainly on the incorporation of social features and do not provide yet personalized and adaptive tutoring. This research provides guidelines to computer science researchers on the design and implementation of SN‐Learning platforms using artificial intelligence and modelling techniques. Moreover, it can support teachers of different fields so that they can enhance their instruction with new technologies. There is scope for a lot of improvement.</jats:p>