Mohammed Alfadil, Hamzah Alharabi, Mahdi Alzamanan & Dr. Mia William

University of Northern ColoradoDepartment of Educational Technology

Introduction

This study investigated the use of social media by college students for educational or learning purposes.

The interest in this research is in functioning social media to successfully help college students to enhance their educational learning.

Today, social media is playing an important role in daily communication among people all over the world.

The researchers hypothesized whether social media has potential impact on educational learning positively or negatively based on their perceptions.

This study seeks to understand how students informally use social media and what implications such uses predict for the potential integration of social media as a formalized learning tool within college classroom settings.

Research Questions, Materials and Methods

1. How do students currently use social media?

2. Are students interested in using social media to enhance their learning?

3. Is the use of social media perceived as an effective tool to meet students’ needs to enhance their learning?

Survey research

 (1) a digital survey shared with the participants through university listservs and Facebook groups.

(2) Follow up interviews took place on campus.   

The participants of this research were 46 college students at a doctoral research institution in the Rocky Mountain region including international students and American college students age 18-45.

Research Question: 1. How do students currently use social media?

Question two was asked to show what social media tools (Facebook and/or Twitter) are used for learning process.

Question one was asked to show what social media tools (Facebook and/or

Twitter) that respondents have accounts with.

Research Question: 2. Are students interested in using social media to

enhance their learning?  

Question four was asked to figure out the time spent by the respondents on both

social media tools Facebook and Twitter in a typical week.

Question three were asked how many number or contact or followers they have

for of each of the social media tools of Facebook and Twitter.

Research Question: 3. Is the use of social media perceived as an effective tool

to meet students’ needs to enhance their learning?    

In question six, participants showed their attitudes about whether integrating social media tools for both Facebook and Twitter in learning context is more or less effective.

Question five polled participants’ opinions about their teacher’s use of social media in their learning and teaching process in

universities.

A large number of respondents deal with social media.

Facebook shows a larger number of users in education setting in respect to Twitter.

Facebook’s higher percentage might be because the popularity of Facebook is more than Twitter, or it might be due to the way Facebook is advertised online as it is easy to find friends of friends and make connection with them.

Majority of the respondents spend between 7-8 hours per week on social media site.

This finding may push people to use Facebook and/or Twitter for educational purposes if courses are built and designed in an effective way so users could take advantage of social media use for learning purposes.

Discussion  

Findings showed that participants spend a significant amount of time on social media and it can be implied that spending time on social media for the learning process might increase performance or motivation of coursework learning.

The participant perceptions provided evidence that additional research to assess the integration of social media in classroom learning is needed.

The results indent warrants additional

investigation. Additional participants (larger N) would provide a clearer picture of the general population of college students.

Follow up could support better understanding of the participants’ experience of using social media in and out of courses and as optional or required learning activities.

Recommendation