Research study about trust in online collaborative learning environments

Hi everyone,

I am a postgraduate student in the Master of Educational Technology at Saarland University in Germany:http://edutech.uni-saarland.de/ and I also hold a bachelor in Education.

I am in the process to write my master thesis and I am searching for an online learning environment to conduct my research. 

The study is entitled “Understanding the impact of trust in collaborative knowledge building communities”. The purpose of the study is to evaluate interpersonal trust in a virtual community and the information sharing behavior of the participants. I want to evaluate if the presence of trust leads to more information sharing, where participants exchange their thoughts and there is a higher potential of in depth discussions and learning effects in the group. The method I will use will be Social Network Analysis.

For this reason, I search for an online environment like wiki, community or social network site group where the participants or students aim to construct new knowledge.

I would like kindly to ask if someone uses a wiki, community or  social network site group for his students in order to access data for my research. The study will be completely anonymous and all the privacy and ethical criteria of a research study would be fulfilled.

Moreover, every advice or information on where I can conduct my research whould be highly valuable.

You can contact me here or by kmichos2@gmail.com

More information on my research plan and my supervisors would be provided

Thanks a lot for your time. 

Kostas