Enhancing Academic Performance in Tertiary Education Through Social Media: A Multi-arm Randomized Controlled Trial of the BE-Social Program

Abstract Few randomized controlled trials have analyzed evidence-based educational practices delivered through a social media environment. This study used a multi-arm randomized controlled trial to evaluate the critical components of an educational intervention package: study self-management skills training delivered through video modeling, cooperative learning, and semi-immediate instructor feedback. We evaluated social media engagement and academic performance among 141 students in a postgraduate applied psychology program. Students were randomly assigned to five groups: control ( n = 27); self-management ( n = 27); cooperative learning ( n = 33); self-management and cooperative learning ( n = 27); and self-management, cooperative learning, and semi-immediate instructor feedback ( n = 27). Results indicated that participants receiving the complete intervention showed numerically higher effect sizes, whereas all groups, except for the self-management group showed significantly higher academic performance than the control group. We discuss the conceptual, methodological, and practical implications of the study.