Learning Management System versus Social Networking Sites

Purpose - The motive of this study was the notice of the constant movement of the students in The University of Jordan (UJ) from official communities to creating groups on SNSs. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate an analysis about students’ usage of E-learning and Facebook, and identifies the major functions that are missing in the e-learning system. This paper firstly, compared students’ usage for Learning Management Systems (LMSs) vs. Social Networking Sites (SNSs), and secondly, investigated the students’ perceptions towards educational value of integrating social networking features in the LMS through Mobile Learning (m-learning). Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from students from multiple sources: observation, interviews, and survey. The obtained results formed students perceptions toward currently used LMS in the university and SNSs, which lead to extracting their requirements to enhance the LMS used. Findings – The results of this research emphasize the importance of SNSs as a communication tool and the development of e-learning systems to move beyond LMS and engage students in an active use of the system as a resource of their information and collaborative activities. Originality/value –This study contributes to examining UJ students’ perceptions toward embedding the characteristics of the smart learning and the social network services into an e-learning system. In contrast to previous studies in enhancing LMS by just integrating features of SNSs into LMS without utilizing smart learning.