Students’ Perceptions of Social Media as a Learning Tool among Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Communication, sharing information, and learning with peers have been popular among students through the use of social media platforms. These platforms offer possibilities to access educational resources, to participate in an academic discourse and to communicate with peers and mentors outside the conventional classroom setting. The issue under study is the views of undergraduate students about the importance of using social media to learn. The study has taken a descriptive survey approach. This sample was composed of 220 undergraduate students that were chosen in arts and science colleges through simple random sampling method. The researchers used a Social Media Learning Opinion Scale that was created by the researcher to collect data. Data analysis was done through percentages, t test and ANOVA. The results show that the majority of students visit social media most often, including YouTube, Google Classroom, and WhatsApp, to study academic content. Another finding of the study was that there is a strong disparity between arts and science students in terms of their views on social media learning, whereas no significant differences were found in terms of gender and locality. The results point to the increased use of social media as an auxiliary learning tool in higher education.