Examining learners' engagement patterns and knowledge outcome in an experiential learning intervention for youth's social media literacy

Social media has become an integral part of youth's daily lives. Though it brings many benefits such as creative self-expression and opportunities for social connection and support, studies have revealed that exposure to cyberbullying, misinformation and disinformation, or phishing and scams pose great risks to youth's mental health and long-term development. There is no lack of education programs designed to teach youth media literacy, but very few offer experiential learning environments to support youth's development of social media literacy. Youth learners' engagement patterns and learning outcomes in such environments remain unknown. This study seeks to fill in this gap by examining how learners' engagement patterns predict learning outcomes (social media literacy) in a simulated environment that embodies the core components of experiential learning. Two types of data were collected from: 1) n = 150 youth participants in a controlled environment (“data from the classroom”), and 2) n = 3552 participants on the internet (“data in the wild”). The findings revealed learners' engagement patterns (e.g., time spent, completion rate of actions etc.) in different phases of experiential learning, and highlighted the importance of active participation (taking recommended actions instead of passively viewing the course content) in predicting better learning outcomes. This study contributes to understanding the relationship between learners' engagement patterns in experiential learning environments and their knowledge outcomes in social media literacy, and offers practical implications for the improvement of instructional design to enhance experiential learning.