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Several studies have found that participants are willing to share personal information on Facebook, due mainly to trust in fellow group members; however, this trust is often influenced by the discussion environment, methods and participants. A learning facilitator is often employed in entrepreneurial courses but few previous studies have examined how they actually influence the effectiveness of teaching. This paper discusses how the trust in such facilitators in the Facebook community influences the development of students in the writing of business plans in order to model learning behavior. We employed pre- and post-test data from a sample of 188 undergraduate students in a mid-sized Taiwanese university and observed the influence of learning facilitators on learning performance. This study also explored the interaction between partner trust and discussion mode with regard to business plan writing. Our results show that having an entrepreneurial consultant participate in the discussion results provide significantly stronger improvements in business plan writing than that afforded by other modes of discussion. A significant interaction between the mode of discussion and partner trust with regard to business plan writing was identified. Our findings make a concrete contribution by increasing our understanding of partner trust and cooperative learning, in a business plan writing course in the Facebook community. The study also provides an alternative course design based on various approaches to the instruction of business plan preparation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]