Emerging Virtual Communities of Practice during Crises: A Sustainable Model Validating the Levels of Peer Motivation and Support

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to validate the role of social media among peers in a virtual community of practice, VCoP, by applying the Delphi technique of data collection and analysis. The study adopts the Grounded Theory methodology to identify the theoretical frame that is developed from the data analysis. The research design identified the areas of social and professional support from Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs from the faculty members’ responses that were chosen by “purposive sampling” rather than random sampling The qualitative data collection took three months, wherein 26 faculty members interacting on WhatsApp during COVID-19 were identified as experts: one of the corner elements of the Delphi technique. The thematic analysis of the results indicated that fulfilling Maslow’s needs was an integral component of social media VCoP. However, unlike Maslow’s model, expressions of the need for safety, belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization took turns as the most important need depending on changing context, gender, and individual preferences. The answer to the research questions, thus, becomes embedded in the research methodology that involves instructors’ perceptions as a validating element of the findings. The main recommendation is to replicate the study in various contexts to monitor faculty well-being to reach a sustainable educational environment.

1. Introduction

Higher education has changed for the better in the post-pandemic world, due to the abrupt transformation triggered by a global pandemic. During the difficult times of the lockdown, teachers resorted to social media platforms for interaction, where forecasts indicated it spiked to 42% across 20 countries during May 2020 [1]. Thus came the need to join the body of research exploring what De Matos Pedro, Alves, and Leitão describe as “intangible” connections and their relation to performance and quality of life in higher education [2] (p. 6). This social media surge shed light on how the quality of life is directly linked to sustainability in educational transformation in a way that encompasses the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as Maslow’s human needs [3].

Despite the extensive use of social media platforms like (Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp groups) in professional environments, only a few studies have been made to test the effectiveness of such platforms in creating virtual communities of practice, VCoP, in higher education. Within this context, universal attention to teachers’ struggles during the pandemic started emerging. This body of research explicitly stated that, with all the care given to students’ needs, very little was given to the challenges that the teachers met while trying to gain the skills required for the online transformation, together with coping with the psychological stress of the pandemic [4,5,6]. The current study fills this gap by examining the effectiveness of VCoP among faculty members in terms of its professional and motivational purposes. It relies on the assumption that, during times of crisis, there was a need that drew on both professional and personal needs and was fulfilled by the emergence of virtual communities of practice (VCoPs) [7]. The analysis aims to fulfil two queries:

• How can the Delphi method validate the data about the efficiency of VCoP using qualitative data collection to reach experts’ consensus?
• How can one to outline sustainable development by quantifying the levels of fulfillment from the work-related WhatsApp group in relation to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs?

2. Literature Review

2.1. Contextualizing Virtual Communities of Practice, VCoPs

The concept of communities of practice, CoPs, is related to a social theory of learning that is directly related to professional development [8], the creation of online learning communities [9], inclusive education [10], and gender studies [11]. Wegner describes it as groups of people who “share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” [12]. The development of the term into virtual communities of practice, VCoPs, results from emerging technologies that offer online platforms to share professional expertise and experiences [13]. VCoPs require relevance or an “urgent problem” to engage members [14].

2.2. Features and Benefits of VCoP

Studies exploring the benefits of a community of practice among peers acknowledge positive reinforcement and reassurance [15,16] while refraining from criticism or pointing out weaknesses [17]. Coto [18] gave a detailed account of the practices of digital communities of practice, CoPs, among faculty members in Higher education. She emphasized the importance of technology as it plays a pivotal role in fostering the main objectives of the CoP in terms of “connecting members, supporting teamwork, building knowledge repositories, building a sense of community, encouraging participation, fostering identity and presence, mentoring and online instruction” (p. 330). Despite the understandable relevance of such work-related groups, the validity of a virtual workgroup as a reliable source of information was not yet in practice.

Virtual communities of practice, VCoPs, on social media show considerable variability as some are planned and organized, while at times they evolve from pre-existing groups [13]. Studies started recognizing four benefits, namely, knowledge, pedagogical content, teaching practices, and emotional support. More recent studies investigated the role played by social media both as formal and informal learning media. Platforms such as WhatsApp provide an instant and open communication environment for building interaction and fostering online learning [7]. Social media VCoPs worked as a platform for professional development for the participants [19]

As higher education around the globe was facing the challenge of transformation to online learning, digital CoPs or virtual VCoPs were becoming increasingly prevalent [20]. The acronym, VCoP, can be used to refer to the digital group of the study [21]. It reflects the process of sharing information besides other aspects being one of the main features of social media. The emerging professional-based or work-based WhatsApp groups lately has directed increasingly focused scholarly attention to the validity of such groups as VCoPs [22]. One of the most significant outcomes of such groups is the enhancement of solidarity, connectedness, and support among participants, which becomes a necessity against the general sense of isolation and disengagement reported in educational domains [23]. The validity of such professional/personal communications must be considered as some recent academic research documented their relevance during the COVID-19 transformational period [24].

Moreover, the use of social media in general, and WhatsApp in particular, is acknowledged as having a profound impact on organizational communication in higher education but still has to be explored [25]. Thus, the trigger of this study and its fundamental questions encompass the validity of such VCoP and its ability to respond to multiple human needs during times of personal and professional difficulties such as the transformation to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2.3. Maslow’s Theory of Motivation and Social Media

The second pivot of the study, which is the specification of the themes for qualitative analysis, derives from adaptations of Abraham Maslow’s most prominent work, “The Theory of Human Motivation,” published in 1943. It categorizes human motivation into a hierarchy of needs that moves upwards from the bottom of a pyramid. The five needs specified by Maslow start from the basic physiological needs at the bottom of the pyramid pre-conditioning moving to higher needs. These include the need for safety, love/belonging, and esteem, while self-actualization lies at the top [26].

Applying Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs on social media interaction is examined by Ghatak and Singh. Their study examines and maps the linkages of Maslow’s hierarchy with social media adoption. It concluded that there is a strong link between participants’ behaviors on social media platforms and the satisfaction of their needs [27]. Their findings suggest that Maslow’s theory fits well with people’s behavior on social media in terms of people’s need for appreciation, love, and satisfaction on different levels as classified by Maslow. Similar research affirms the positive correlation between Maslow’s categories of psychological well-being, and social media [28]. There are also the prospects of using WhatsApp as a focus group due to the type of collective conversation that a group conducts while interacting with it [29].

3. Methodology and Design

Applying the Grounded Theory research methodology is adopted from previous studies seeking to explore a suitable CoP model [30]. It relies on generating a theory grounded in data that is collected and analyzed to uncover social relationships and behavior of groups [31,32,33]. The research employed the Delphi method, which included a mixed-method analysis technique and validation of results followed a thematic analysis of participants’ responses. The data employed was quantitative and qualitative, which constituted a corpus of participants’ responses, to support the thematic analysis. Every stage of data collection was followed by a cycle of exploration, evaluation, and reevaluation of findings based on participants’ feedback, which Turoff and Hiltz describe as “evidence” [34], (p. 88).

Ethical considerations were met at the onset of the study as the research design and survey were reviewed by the university’s Institutional Review Board, IRB. To obtain the IRB clearance, it was crucial to specify that participants’ consent is an integral part of the study. It was explicitly stated at the beginning of the research while approaching participants, and their official agreement was recorded at the beginning of the questionnaire as a documentation tool. The research purpose and expected role of the faculty who accept to take part in the study were specified. Participation was voluntary and the participants had the right to withdraw at any time. Participants were assured of the confidentiality of their personal information by keeping their identities under an alias (each reference to a particular response was introduced using a number or just a general reference to the response.

The choice of the Delphi method achieved a mixed-method data analysis where participants presented unique stakeholders’ subjective opinions [35]. The purpose was to meet a rising acknowledgment of the importance of qualitative and mixed-method techniques in validating research results where human perceptions are key [36,37,38]. The coding employed for the thematic analysis was done through a thorough familiarization with the data deduced from Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs to measure the effects of belonging to a VCoP. Each participant is given a numerical number which is the same as the number of the document including the transcript for his responses. The number remains the same for all areas of analysis.

The use of the Delphi method in higher education is established as a communication structure utilized for “forming guidelines, standards and in predicting trends.” [39] (p. 1). The Delphi Method is defined as a research process where a group of experts comes to a mutual agreement about a topic through a round of questionnaires where feedback from each stage is released for discussion [40]. Thus, every stage informs the direction of the discussion as participants reflect further on their responses and see if they accept the findings from the collective feedback. The methodology was originally designed by Olaf Helmer and Norman Dalkey of the Rand Corporation, with the name inspired by the Oracle of Delphi, the ancient Greek priestess of prophecies [41].

Even though the Delphi method has been used in academia since the 1930s, it was not widely popular due to how demanding it is in terms of time and intensity [42]. With the technicality of the method becoming more accessible, the method was brought to researchers’ interest due to its unique validation. As Lewis affirms, the Delphi technique offers solutions through the active participation of the involved parties who will be affected by the results [43]. This context of the expert opinion of participants that makes the Delphi method relevant to multiple institutions that can benefit from the panel consensus even though they have to review and benchmark the findings of studies to suit their own situations [37,44]. It should be noted that there is no limit to the number of participants; a sample size of a minimum of eight is considered acceptable [45].

The digital platform of choice is WhatsApp, chosen by the faculty members during the lockdown for interacting together during the crisis. The main WhatsApp group was already present before the crisis to increase connectivity among faculty members. The study sets off to report perceptions related to this group; however, through analysis, all participants spoke of several work-related WhatsApp groups offering different levels of support. Thus, the discussion refers to several WhatsApp groups branching from the “original” group.

The quantitative data is provided from the survey, where a Likert scale is employed to measure participants’ perceptions together with an open-ended question for part I of the qualitative analysis (Round 1). This provides the preliminary findings that direct the discussion within the semi-structured interviews, which are recorded for transcription and then turned into a corpus for each theme deduced from Maslow’s categories (Round 2). To complete the final stage of the round of data collection specified by the Delphi Methodology, all participants were invited for a focus group where they discussed the findings to reach an agreement about the research results (Round 3) (see Figure 1).

3.1. Data Collection

Due to social distancing enforced by the pandemic, all research steps were conducted through digital correspondence via emails, Google Forms, WhatsApp, and Google Meet for personal interviews and discussions. It is considered of double benefit to the study: On the one hand, data collection became one of the practices of the virtual community of practice confirming that “human–human” interaction using computer-mediated communication is an essential part of networked learning [46]. On the other hand, one component of the Delphi method is to use digital platforms to replace an in-person focus group to eliminate peer pressure or influence of other participants’ responses as detailed later.

The sampling for the Delphi technique followed criteria sampling rather than random sampling [47]. The minimum number of eight is considered reasonable for qualitative probing of expert opinion [45], while a range from 10 to 18 is introduced as a reliable option [48]. The criteria, in this case, are the group of faculty members sharing the WhatsApp group being expert educators. The participants of the study were 26 faculty members who accepted the terms of the research and signed a consent form as per the IRB committee clearance. All 26 filled out the questionnaire on Google Forms and also sent their reflections in response to the open-ended question asking for reflections on the WhatsApp group, while 20 participated in follow-up interviews, and then 22 joined the focus group. Even though the group comprises faculty members from both genders and all levels of academic and administrative expertise, the chairpersons and directors were excluded, being regarded as managerial level with different roles.

Round 1 (Survey Questions): Demographic questions established contextual information that played a role in the overall analysis. Participants provided their names, academic ranks, administrative positions, and years of expertise. Even though the study ensured anonymity at publication, it was crucial to keep a record of individual responses during data collection to follow up with their reflections that evolved with every stage of the Delphi process. However, the participants were given numbers to represent their responses in the thematic analysis.

The survey design was derived from three sources that outline the participants’ perceptions of the topic and the conceptual framework of the methodology. The first source was the types of posts prevailing in the work-related WhatsApp group(s), the second was the level of fulfillment in relation to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and the third was the emerging digital community of practice.

Open-ended Survey Question: The open-ended question focused on the pros and cons of work-related social media platforms, which left more room for participants to express their opinions. These responses were typed within the survey, which facilitated the compiling of a corpus for analysis. All 26 participants submitted their reflections.

Round 2 (Semi-structured Interviews): The semi-structured interviews were guided by every participant’s response during the initial steps. More freedom was allowed for self-expression and elaboration on their unique experience with the VCoP during social distancing. The role of the interviewer was to share some of the preliminary findings to reach an initial agreement and entice a deeper analysis of the experience. During the interviews, participants could revisit their answers to the survey questions and share their own opinions beyond the structured survey. The interviews were around 30 min each and were transcribed for thematic analysis. It is important to note that the study does not rely only on the digital corpus analysis but on the researchers’ insights from the interview transcriptions, which is the result of familiarization with the data.

Round 3 (The Focus Group): The focus group was conducted after a month of sending the survey, which gave a true chance to reflect on the topic. Twenty-two participants attended the meeting via Google Meet, which was the first collective meeting with all four researchers. The findings were shared at the beginning of the session and then the flow of the discussion was not bound by any set of questions. The meeting was about an hour long and was recorded for analysis of reflections on the final findings in the hope of reaching a consensus.

3.2. Data Analysis

The semi-structured interviews and the focus group meetings created a body of qualitative data that provided the topic identification for the thematic analysis. The transcripts constituted a corpus that was analysed computationally. Computational tools for the thematic analysis provide distinct benefits besides genuine concerns. The corpus analysis gave accurate readings of the results of the word count, density of corpora, and most frequent words across corpora for each topic TF*IDF and context. However, it remained a support tool for the traditional analysis of main ideas related to each theme. Throughout the research, corpus size, TF-IDF, and the number representing term or phrase frequency were extracted from the corpus analysis. In addition, screenshots for Figures 2–9 show the computational word relations depicted for key terms or phrases.

4. Results

4.1. The Survey

The first four questions of the survey were demographic. It provided information about the group of faculty members, starting with their names since their answers would be revisited throughout the round of responses and sharing of findings. The other questions identified their level of expertise, position, and level of activity on social media. For example, the range of expertise from the number of teaching years ranges from 2 years to 37 years of experience.

The qualitative analysis allows for various levels of insight that are personalized in what some researchers described as a typology of educators [49]. One of the interesting observations was that faculty members at the beginning of their career or with fewer years of expertise were more open about receiving help or asking for assistance. On the other hand, faculty members with more experience were reluctant to admit that they needed assistance, especially regarding technology. It was also noted that male faculty members would rather send private questions to the coordinator or someone on the team rather than sending to the group.

The following questions of the survey were 19 five-point Likert scale statements concerning positive and negative experiences regarding work-related WhatsApp groups. Two questions evaluated the level of social media involvement before and after the COVID-19 crisis contributing to whether it is easier for faculty members who were already active on social media to make use of the WhatsApp group during the lockdown period.

The order of questions followed the same order specified in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and started with the basic needs, then moved to the more sophisticated ones. The first questions about the efficiency of the WhatsApp group were related to safety, then social belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization. Responses indicated that the participants were aware of the role of the WhatsApp group(s) and the levels of support that it provided. The highest results of the statistical responses were related to helpful job information, light-hearted conversation and jokes, and technology tips and troubleshooting information with 84.6%, 84.9%, and 76%, respectively.

These responses became the most commonly accepted by participants to indicate the efficiency of the WhatsApp interaction. The percentage that reflected an average consensus was 69.2%. It affirmed that the respondents became more connected within the VCoP, that the VCoP was a good source of information about online classes, and that it helped them feel closer to colleagues. As for the quality of the interaction, 53.9% believed that their interaction with colleagues became more positive after the pandemic, and the same percentage applied to having a sense of security from the group (a result that is challenged by the qualitative responses). A total of 53.8% confirmed that the group allowed more social bonding, while 53.9% thought it was a good source of Memos and official directives. The following percentages were the ones related to career support and psychological support, both at 46.2%, while having a sense of achievement from the group was at 38.5%. The last responses were recorded with 30.8% for using WhatsApp for medical information and 23.1% for mental development and self-esteem.

Open-Ended Survey Question

In a quick analysis of the open-ended survey question, all participants reported how WhatsApp was a work-related social media platform. Their perceptions were all related to the surface value of functionality. The data was submitted via Google Forms and thus was easily transformed into a corpus with separate entries to differentiate each response.

The corpus provided a line graph showing the relative frequencies across the corpus responses. Only the number of each participant appears in the analysis for the sake of anonymity, as specified in the IRB clearance for the study. The corpus is too short for a conclusive significance of repeated clusters with only 1368 total words and 670 unique word forms that quantifies the survey responses. It provides a simple, textual overview of the multiple documents’ (participants’ responses) number of words, number of unique words, longest and shortest documents, highest and lowest vocabulary density, the average number of words per sentence, most frequent words, notable peaks in frequency, and distinctive words. Most frequent words in the corpus: “work” was repeated 24 times, “colleagues” was repeated 16 times, “cons” was repeated 14 times, “communication” 10 times, and “messages” also 10 times.

Since the open-ended question is confined to cons and pros, the corpus design facilitated the recurring terms about the themes in the study. The most recurrent topics common among all group responses, which were “work”, “colleagues”, “communication”, and “messages”, are indicative of a work environment. The answers fluctuated between an acknowledgment of the function of the WhatsApp group as a useful tool and various concerns thus reaching pros vs. cons points of view. There was not a strong expression of positive words vs. negative words appearing at this stage of the responses as opposed to the following step. Words like “reach”, “skill”, “laugh”, “relied”, “trustful”, and “socially” can fall within the pros, while cons were linked to “exhausting”, “weak”, “trivial”, and “unreasonable”. This preliminary probe gives pointers to participants’ perceptions about WhatsApp as beneficial as a virtual social space for sharing skills and laughs in a trustful atmosphere. Interestingly, the reported cons were related to the very nature of social media’s connectivity or reachability as faculty members revealed concern over the increased flow of messages that increased stress and lead to exhaustion.

4.2. The Semi-Structured Interviews

The semi-structured interviews were conducted through Google Meet and constitute the corpus to support the thematic analysis guided by Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. Twenty out of the twenty-six participants starting the study were able to participate in the interviews. The interviewers were not to interfere with participants’ reflections so as not to affect the results. The interviews’ transcriptions were assigned to a research assistant to deal with data entry for the corpus based on the identified topics of discussion followed by coding the main themes that were deduced from Maslow’s five human needs and the initial inspection of the body of interviews.

The following are the topics of discussion, categorized into different clusters:

• Activity before Lockdown vs. Activity After;
• Medical information;
• Sense of security: Basic needs;
• Professional development;
• Developing a sense of community: Social bonding;
• Media exhaustion.

Responses related to each topic of discussion were used to create separate corpora that analyzed their impact in terms of word use and ratios. The following analysis of the question about “the rate of use before and after COVID-19” is used as an indication of the options that the process offers. The corpus tool allows for customization options such as getting rid of stop-words which renders more accurate results. Options like word trends provide the relative frequency of the selected word compared to its location in the text. The following is some general information about the corpus such as total words (tokens), word forms (types), and age of the corpus besides the most frequent terms in the corpus. Because this corpus has 20 documents for the 20 participants, they are ordered by document length and vocabulary density. The most important feature, however, is the most distinctive words for each document where a numerical statistic reflects the importance of a word in relation to the corpus (by TF-IDF score). The TF*IDF algorithm is used to weigh a keyword in any content and assign importance to that keyword based on the number of times it appears in the document (TF or term frequency) and how relevant the keyword is throughout the corpus (IDF or inverse document frequency). TF*IDF is the product of both scores.

Activity Before COVID-19 vs. Activity After. This corpus has 20 documents with 4352 total words and 1026 unique word forms; see Figure 2. This topic provides insight into participants’ rate of activity on the work-related WhatsApp group after the COVID-19 crisis.

There is a global consensus that the use of social media platforms has increased during the lockdown, but the interviews within this study have provided a different angle. The findings from the interviews reveal that faculty members who were already active on social media in general were the ones with the most activity on the WhatsApp group after the lockdown, while faculty members who were not active on social media generally stayed as such. Even with the affirmation that those who were not active were still “silent” spectators, it still counts that the level or rate of interaction was affected not only by the COVID-19 situation, but by other environmental or personal variables. However, it is certainly helpful to recognize how one faculty member with almost no interaction on the WhatsApp group said that it was comforting for her to “know that colleagues were a click away”.

The corpus tools such as context offer more Insight into the participants’ perceptions. Phrases such as “definitely, yes”, “much more”, “we couldn’t do without it”, “I always have been using… now much more”, “so active”, and “fastest than email” appear concerning the term “WhatsApp”, where it appears in documents 1 and 8 two times, in document 2 five times, in document 4 four times, while in documents 3, 6, 7 and 9, it appears once; see Figure 3.

As Maslow’s categories of needs provided the main themes for the coding, all the interviews were coded in a way that every topic presented the linguistic evidence reflecting each theme. The analysis follows the pyramid construction with the lower needs, even though basic, being the basis on which the others depend. Thus, they need to be satisfied before an individual can attend to a “higher” need. The main themes deduced from Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs and detected from the analysis of the interviews were as such:

Physiological needs and the need for safety lie at a lower level in Maslow’s hierarchy, respectively, and appear within the corpus in discussions such as the importance of medical information, which is unique to the pandemic discussions. During the social distancing and especially with the lockdown, there was an acknowledgment of the array of worries, especially during the first days of the lockdown. Most participants mentioned worrying about obtaining basic everyday needs such as groceries or even water while others mentioned medical concerns with the lack of information about the coronavirus. A total of 76% of participants did not acknowledge that the WhatsApp group was a source of medical information and they had rather relied on the Ministry of Health instructions or more reliable sources, but 40% admitted they found the tips regarding “which grocery delivery service is more efficient or economic” to be useful. A total of 63% of the participants spoke of job security, which was one of the areas of uncertainty, especially with some posts being shared on the WhatsApp group of people losing their jobs; see Figure 4.

This corpus has 20 documents with 2810 total words and 858 unique word forms. In the same way, inspecting the context option yields a different set of phrases that reveal more context around the keyword of choice (before and after). To demonstrate, the word “security” appears three times in documents 1, 3, and 10, while it appears twice in document 9 and once in document 8. The phrases from the contextual parsing are “basic needs” appearing in six responses: “sense of support not security”, “security can have many facets”, “they were relieved”; “job security was a major concern”, “concerned about job”; and “they were worried about their jobs”; see Figure 5.

Love and belonging appear in Maslow’s model as humans’ need for relationships, friendship, love, social rootedness, or familial acceptance. The participants acknowledge the emergence of a sense of community through certain topics of discussion, some of which became more evident by the computational analysis of the corpus, while others emerged from the analysis of the interviews.

First, all participants affirmed that, during the lockdown, there was the need to have more than just one WhatsApp group related to work. The practice is interestingly described by the participants during the interviews in different ways, each adding depth to the discussion. There is the simple explanation that some specific information was relevant to some faculty members and they did not find it suitable to bother others with it, thus the need to have separate WhatsApp groups for every subject taught in the college. Moreover, sharing tips, advice, and decisions about certain subjects was quite relevant to the teachers involved. However, it was important to stop at three highly interesting comments about the different WhatsApp groups apart from the main one. The first is that there was a need for “excluding” certain people from the group, not just people who are not interested in specific topics, but also management. They spoke of how it was sometimes easier to discuss topics such as the efficiency of decisions taken by the institution, venting, or deciding on how to present topics to management on behalf of the whole group. There is a consensus that those side conversations were of great help for “validation” and “tension relief”. There is another phrase used by one of the participants, which was that the different WhatsApp groups provided “different levels of support”.

At this point, the term “community” starts appearing in participants’ responses as they started formalizing the direction of the discussion. Four participants used the term directly, while it was repeated six times throughout the whole corpus. Another interesting term that recurs from the corpus analysis is the term “bonding” in the context of the term “social/social media”. It is repeated six times by five of the respondents; see Figure 6.

Jokes and Light-hearted conversation were one of the most prominent and assertive aspects of the discussion for the WhatsApp purpose and effect. The corpus comprises 2430 words, which makes it the third largest after “media exhaustion corpus” and “social media activity”; see Figure 7.

On one level, there was a near agreement that joking was a common aspect of the WhatsApp interaction, with eight participants commenting directly on how they enjoyed it. The word “jokes” was repeated 16 times with positive correlations such as “support, liked a lot, yes it had an impact, and your jokes were good.” Sometimes the mention of jokes was conservative like “all day … send jokes and stupid pictures, there were a lot, to be honest, eventually ran out of good jokes, it dried up” and one mention of the term “jokes dried-up”; see Figure 8.

For a more accurate understanding of the term “use,” another option by the corpus is to expand the context to gain a better understanding of the conversation. To demonstrate, participants started associating joking with certain people who continuously posted humorous content, for example, documents 1 and 8 referred to specific names while participant 8 called the person “a prominent figure”. Others like participants 2, 3, 5,7, and 8 had a deeper reflection on jokes and humor being the main purpose of social media and not mental engagement or professional development while using positive terms such as: sharing tips and jokes, Yeah I liked a lot … my goodness it was crazy, I have three or four friends and that’s what we do all day … send jokes, … we’re missing each other… so some jokes some cartoons I love that, … posted funny stuff that made me laugh. (Interview transcriptions, Figure 9).

Participant 9 referred to the jokes neutrally without adding any positive or negative correlations, while participant 6 was quite reserved about liking the joking aspect, especially with all the worry around the pandemic. On the other hand, participant 6 brought up a very interesting observation, which is, “… the same people who were very worried will also put the extreme jokes, silly”; see Figure 9.

Media Exhaustion. The largest corpus by far, comprising 7596 words, and mentioned by all participants elaborately is closely linked to the very nature of social media. It reflects both a real concern over the lack of boundaries that are usually established with workplace correspondence and discontent over continuous connectivity. It is crucial to use the expanded context through which media exhaustion is best represented even with the raw data. The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 & 10 refer to the number of a certain document (corresponding to a sample of a participant’s expression) in the corpus:

(1) I’m not working 24 h, (2) that was duplication, but end of the day, because you are staying home the meeting start 9 or 8 pm, very strange timings, I was surprised, (3) I leave my phone 10 min I have 100 messages, the amount of information … maybe its better to get emails, (4) some people, not me, prefer an email, (5) there are huge implications and considerations … we are in holiday and being dragged into things, impact of moving online is a dangerous one, on people all the time, never before … were people harassed during that time, high pressure situation, I feel sorry for people, very difficult to extract yourself or sideline yourself, professionalism is important, when email is on mobile it takes 20 min instead of the usual 12 h, as a marker of professional conduct I respond in X amount of time, protocol should be established and given fair due, it should be a choice, there are other dynamics that are not mentioned like someone who has been here for 12 years would not be as pressured as someone new, we have a very big problem at the moment breaking communication protocol with official memos circulating on WhatsApp so origin is not certain and might reach people who are not intended for, (7) it is fine if I didn’t see it on social media that I have it on WhatsApp maybe the only drawback that its overwhelming receiving a lot of this stuff, we working 24 h because it might be the default or that the mistake is with me I should limit or control that, (8) we need to have some rules, … I think we should have some kind of regulation or netiquette, people should know what to post and what not to post, (9) and that does not look very professional because I had to translate … important information Arabic and English, I just silenced it because it was too much, (10) the mess that we had at the beginning and the new instructions new strategies, it was confusing to read all these messages besides my classes so it was the only negative point but other than that it was really helpful-it really helped me a lot-in following up and understanding what I need to do, well, it was helpful, memos and circulars social media related remarks, hacking or non-trustworthy sources, even though social media can have a non-trustworthy aspect, work-related social medi ais the opposite.

4.3. The Focus Group

The focus group was conducted after a month of sending the survey and gave a true chance to reflect on the topic. Twenty-two participants were able to join the group for an hour meeting on Google Meet since social distancing still applied. The first remark was that three months after the start of the crisis, the environment is much more relaxed and there was more room for reflection about the efficiency of the WhatsApp group(s). Upon sharing the statistical findings, the discussion was geared towards a re-affirmation of the effective aspects of the group especially during the crisis and up to the meeting’s date.

One of the findings about the humor and light-hearted conversation is that it helped to relieve stress and worry. It was the most popular point of discussion. The range of the remarks confirmed the transformation of the interaction on the WhatsApp group after the lockdown, stating that it became more active and vibrant. The level of interaction was much denser during the first days in terms of both quantity and quality. The number of posts would exceed 100 posts at the peak of discussions about the decision to conduct classes online, or whether exams will be virtual as well. In terms of quality, the key themes specified for the thematic analysis as safety, social belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization emerge as a staple component of the interaction. The first consensus among group members is that, even with the decrease in the amount of interaction as the crisis “stabilized”, the bonding among the group was still strong. “We continue to provide each other with more data and info regarding online education”, “There was a shift of the health tips to a help with our mental health and psychology”, “The videos we shared relieved my stress, especially at that time”, “the college WhatsApp group was the safest place for exchange.” It was at this point that one of the participants again challenged how social media can be more effective than emails asking “what is the difference between emails, can someone elaborate whether it is for ease or security,” to which another participant agreed that emails provide a more official platform while social media is fastest and easier to access, “I consider WhatsApp as step 1 to know something, then I attend to emails.” The participants decided to repeat the concern over confidentiality and sharing official memos and directions while indicating other uses for the group. One participant said she did not have a Twitter account, and that sharing Tweets made her “happy”. This brought the conversation back to “the ease” and “the speed” of the information on the WhatsApp using phrases like “really helpful in terms of support” while having a concern over “pervasiveness.” The concern over redundance was related to the same information coming from the various WhatsApp groups that were all related to the workplace at all times, “any time from day or night.” When showing the findings phrases like “I was supported emotionally”, “the WhatsApp was useful in two ways: educational and social especially that we missed social interaction with social distancing,” “you feel you are not alone as you know what others are doing, so I used Google Sheets and this happened,” in response to how it felt to answer each other’s questions, there was a shift in the remarks to “I loved hearing what I shared was helpful”, “I liked answering colleagues’ questions and asking question as well; it’s not a one way street;.” “Some asked for help privately on WhatsApp”, “I think social media should stay as social group and not the use it to replace official emails”, “It was good.” Finally, social media is more concise, “you don’t have to type the full Dear Dr. …, you just send your ideas.” The focus group discussion continued for an hour, in which the phrase “I agree” was repeated 18 times, while assertion using “definitely” and “surely” was repeated throughout.

5. Discussion

Parallel to the literature surveyed, the current study’s findings suggest that allowing faculty members to engage with each other and support one another will eventually evolve into a community of practice [15]. This interaction can be identified as social sustainability in higher education where basic human needs are the primary indicators [50] while achieving sustainable academic motivation where creating good relations is a desirable motivation measure [51]. The results also establish the validity of a virtual platform as a reliable way for establishing such a community. The socio-technical interaction certainly goes beyond the stereotype of social media superficiality and proves to be a positive learning experience, as suggested by Tyrer in her study of the effect of WhatsApp group messages within teacher’s development programs [52].

In this study, we examined (1) how the Delphi method can validate the data about the efficiency of VCoP using qualitative data collection to reach experts’ consensus, and (2) how to outline sustainable development by quantifying the levels of fulfillment from the work-related WhatsApp group in relation to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. We found that, in relation to the Delphi method, it is a time-consuming method since it requires a number of rounds to complete and the analysis for each round has to be completed before the following round begins. However, the method was extremely effective in reaching an expert consensus. This result is in accordance with similar studies [53] that also found that the consensus reached by the Delphi method is more significant than the general consensus methods. Participants’ responses evolved with every stage of the discussion as they displayed deeper reflections on the findings. This is an important feature of the Delphi technique that allows experts to give an informed decision about the findings [54].

The three rounds of data collection offer three types of datasets that probed the topic through the Delphi method, blending the quantitative and qualitative. In the quantitative stage, Likert scaling did not allow room for elaboration, while the findings were easily aggregated into percentages. On the one hand, it gave crucial insight into the demographic landscape that affects interaction within the WhatsApp group. On the other hand, the percentages regarding each topic were either confirmed by the qualitative analysis or contradicted where some of the answers were challenged, but in each case, there was more insight about all the themes. All 26 participants of the study were members of the WhatsApp group. They were all experts in their fields, being faculty members teaching university-level courses, which is one of the most important elements of the Delphi technique.

In relation to outlining sustainable development by quantifying the levels of fulfilment from the work-related WhatsApp group in relation to Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, we found that the findings contradict the assumption that the higher needs on Maslow’s hierarchy are superior to the lower needs. Therefore, the findings set out a new path in adapting Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a framework for outlining and quantifying sustainability in higher education. The findings of the study show that, in times of crisis, the importance of every category of needs is dictated by context, gender, and personal consideration even though it agrees with the body of research specifying the categories of human needs and the affirmation that social media connectedness helped improve well-being [28]. On the one hand, Maslow’s theory affirms that humans should be treated as integral units, which is why a view of the collective categories of needs is the only path to satisfaction: in this case, professional and mental support, especially during a time of crisis. On the other hand, in times of crisis, safety and the fulfilment of basic needs of obtaining water and groceries during the lockdown, and job security became an urgent factor followed by social belonging (a higher need). Thus, the context dictated which need is more important regardless of its position in the hierarchy. The higher needs according to Maslow were not of great significance during the crisis due to the unique nature of the global pandemic and the pursuing lockdown. Thus, the most significant findings fell within the themes of “Safety”, “Social belonging”, and “Esteem”.

Gender differences became slightly evident with every stage of the data collection. Male faculty members were reluctant to admit the need for social support, claiming that everything was fine when answering the questionnaire, but began to open up with the semi-structured interviews and the focus group. When asked about the kind of support that they identified, they were more open about professional tips than security or about social support. This conforms with previous research affirming that females are more open about giving or receiving social support in an online context [46] while males emphasize that they are not using it to socialize [55,56]. Gatak and Singh reach a similar distinction with gender influence on social media usage [27].

6. Implications and Future Research

With the gained knowledge from the interaction on a VCoP, the socially sustainable nature of such platforms for professional and motivational purposes is evident. The results of the study also indicate that VCoPs are strong tools for the professional development of faculty members as well as for creating a sense of social belonging and safety [21]. It fits a frame of professional development that is personalized involving mentoring and collaboration where faculty members address their particular needs [57]. Therefore, it is important to sustain and promote the use of VCoPs to maintain the level of support provided to the faculty members. Since the participants are experts, their input differs from the standard random sampling used in similar research.

Future studies should replicate the model to examine its validity in different contexts. The reported level of support can change with the variation in the level of expertise of the participants and the context of the study [7]. Follow-up studies can examine if the same interaction within social media work groups will persist in the post-pandemic era. Moreover, building on the emerging discrepancy in Maslow’s hierarchy of importance of needs can yield more developed results [58].

7. Limitations

One of the limitations of the study lies in the limitations of qualitative research, as it hinders generalization. The study reports a case study that claims that meeting human needs as specified by Maslow’s hierarchy can foster a community of practice to support and consolidate work environments. The model can be replicated, but one of the strengths remains to be the personalized experience and feedback that can yield different results with each application. Moreover, the Delphi technique requires a high level of commitment from the participants who need to show up for all the rounds of the data collection.

8. Conclusions

The quantification of the various levels of fulfillment from the work-related WhatsApp group confirms the categories of human needs as specified by Maslow’s hierarchy. The findings of the research shed light on a shift in the importance of needs confirming the strong link between participants’ behaviour on social media platforms and the satisfaction of these needs. Thus, the conceptual frame derived from the Delphi method offers an answer to the first research question. The analysis of the VCoP provides validation of the role of social media in professional environments and the profound need to support teachers to cope with pressure and uncertainty.

The second research question is embedded in the responses of the research participants who specify the dynamics of a digital community of practice, VCoP. It is summarized as revealing the positive aspects of immediacy and connectivity related to social media interaction, while warning against the negative effects of lack of boundaries and social media exhaustion. Achieving the expected results in VCoP depend on the context of the study, the level of expertise of the participants, and their gender. One of the main contributions of the study is to acknowledge the needs of one of the main stakeholders from the WhatsApp interaction to achieve a sustainable educational environment [36]. The group interaction eased the fears of uncertainty and self-doubt that might result from the routinization of practice [56]. However, it is noted that, even though human needs such as the need for safety, social belonging, esteem, and self-actualization are all part of human motivation and fulfillment, their order can change depending on variables like context, expertise, and gender.