Online knowledge sharing experience with Creative Commons

Purpose – Many studies have integrated the mechanism of Creative Commons (CC) or similar mechanisms into web 2.0 platforms for supporting learning. The CC mechanism may create new types of knowledge sharing environments. The purpose of this paper is to explore students’ trust, knowledge sharing self-efficacy, and outcome expectations in the context of a knowledge sharing platform using the CC mechanism. Design/methodology/approach – The participants were 86 sixth-grade Taiwanese students. Within the context of online drawing and storytelling activities, a quantitatively self-reported instrument was adopted to assess the sharing experience with the CC mechanism. Findings – The results found complex interrelationships among trust, sharing self-efficacy, and outcome expectations identified in the literature. The results further reveal that students who showed high community-related outcome expectations would adopt the non-CC approach (read-only, i.e. the shared works can not be used and modified) as they possessed lower identification-based trust. In contrast, those who adopted CC approach (i.e. the shared works are able to be used and modified) placed higher level of economy-based trust and showed a lower level of community-related outcome expectations. The results reflect that students who have low performance expectancy and sharing self-efficacy are more willing to share their work using the CC approach. Originality/value – The results of this paper show that in such a mechanism there exists close interplay between trust, sharing self-efficacy, and outcome expectations. It is therefore, suggested that researchers and educators should note the influence of the sharing mechanism on the sharing activity when knowledge sharing is involved in pedagogical design. The implications derived from the findings for educational practice were also discussed.