Assessing the Impact of Social Media Analytics Software on Student Learning

Abstract

This article examines differences between two courses tasked with writing a technical report on social media content. In one course, students employed any freely available applications to aid their analysis. In another course, students were provided access to commercial social media analytics software (SMAS). Using grounded theory and statistical methods, the researchers found clear differences among groups. ttests were employed on a number of group variables to determine statistical significance. Effect size was calculated and found to be consistently high. Overall, students who had access to social media analytics software (SMAS) demonstrated stronger overall analytical skills than their counterparts.