A Model to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Collaborative Online Learning Teams – Self-Disclosure and Social Exchange Theory Perspective

Collaborative online learning teams (COLTs) are teams that are comprised of groups of online students. Accompanying the popularity of online learning, both on campuses and as professional development within many industries, learning in groups has been attracting much attention. However, there is little research constructing intact frameworks to evaluate the effectiveness of COLTs. This study built a framework by incorporating six constructs: self-disclosure, social exchange, trust, cohesion, performance and satisfaction, and validated it by analyzing data from a five-week experiment. The results showed that social exchange had a significant impact on trust, but self-disclosure did not. Trust was significantly related to cohesion and cohesion was significantly related to performance and satisfaction. This study suggests that instructors should incorporate the number of students’ posts into parts of evaluation to facilitate self-disclosure, and to stop “social loafing” behaviors while encouraging social exchange activities.