Design Principles (DPs) for building social media enabled collaborative learning Environments (SMECLEs)

Twenty years ago, it was proclaimed that collaborative technologies were able to impact the learning environments of educational institutions. Despite research indicating that these collaborative technologies could impact the learning environments in a positive way, no change occurred. Twenty years later, the same claims are being made, where a new collaborative technology, social media, is being proclaimed to be able to impact the learning environments of education institutions, by changing, and possibly improving, the learning approach. However, while these calls are being made, there is currently a lack of understanding on whether social media platforms are effective at enabling collaborative learning. To address this lack of understanding, it is first necessary to create prescriptive knowledge on how we can build collaborative learning environments with the platforms of social media, which this study does.