Creation of an academic social network to promote learning in university students

Abstract

The use of social networks has spread in such a way that today these spaces have millions of users around the world and have become interesting tools for analysis at various levels and areas, not only entertainment. The observatories of social networks present a use of more than 4620 million people by 2022, a number that continues growing. The relevance of social networks togetherwith the evolution of education and how it can be supported by technological tools, becomes an opportunity to explore the ways inwhich they can support the students in their learning process. Therefore, it is proposed to design and implement an educational social network for students of the Systems Engineering career, seeking to provide content, exchange information and create networks among classmates that allow them to learn and use elements within their area of study, making the most of connectivity devices, software applications and the ubiquity of thestudent in their available time. For this purpose, a mixed methodological approach is used with a concurrent triangulation design and explanatory scope in a population consisting of asample of 300 students from different universities. This process is defined to identify the functionalities that generate greater interestand knowledge in the community, then proceed with the design and implementation of the social network, built under an OpenUPsoftware development methodology, which is an iterative agile process, to finally be put into practice and determine, with quantitative measurements, the impact and interest achieved.