Is there a valuable role that social media can play in education? Writing in the International Journal of Innovation and Learning, a research team from Malaysia and Thailand discuss the advent of e-learning and its growth in the early part of this century.
“E-learning combines modern interactive learning methods with knowledge management methods that provide better evaluation of knowledge,” they explain. They add that “Social media has brought revolutionary new ways of interacting, participating, cooperating and collaborating which involve users generating content and connecting with people through a ‘many-to-many’, rather than the traditional ‘one-to-many’, communication approach.”
The question then arises as to what the interplay between e-learning and social media acceptance and use look like. Khalid Abdul Wahid of the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) in Kelantan, Malaysia, working with colleague Wan Saiful ‘Azzam Wan Ismail there and Haruthai Numprasertchai of Kasetsart University, in Bangkok, Thailand, hoped to lay bare the connections. Fundamentally, their survey of 359 students in Malaysia shows that:
“All antecedents of technology acceptance which included performance expectancy, effort expectancy and facilitating condition have positive significant effect on collective learning except social influence.”
The team points out that universities must provide sufficient infrastructure and those people working around students need to recognise just how much time students spend online. Importantly, students are accessing the internet on campus, but many spend more time online than in face-to-face classes. This has become a normalized scenario and thus it is important that the information and communications technology is in place to support this shift in attitude and activity.
Wahid, K.A., Ismail, W.S.A.W. and Numprasertchai, H. (2019) ‘The role of social media in collective learning’, Int. J. Innovation and Learning, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp.363–376.