Abstract
Social learning refers to the learning delivered through social media applications. The examination of students’ attitudes towards using social media applications for learning activities is still not fully understood. For this reason, this research is carried out with the aim of measuring the students’ attitudes towards using social media from the lenses of several attributes, including gender, age, governorate, year of study, social media application, experience, and interest. The population of this study is the students enrolled at eight different universities and colleges located in eight different governorates in Oman. A total of 1307 students took part in this research through the use of an online survey. The results showed that gender, age, governorate, experience, and interest have significant impacts on students’ attitudes. Nevertheless, the study years and social media applications did not expose any significant effect on students’ attitudes. Additionally, WhatsApp was found to be the most predominant application used for educational purposes. Further, the study reported the barriers faced by the students while using social media applications for learning purposes. In response to these barriers, the study also provided a number of suggestions for improving the overall usage of social media in higher educational institutes.
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Appendix
Appendix
The following items were derived from the third part of the survey and used to measure the students’ attitudes towards the usage of social media applications in the educational process:
C1: Social media can help me to share information and learning materials with my colleagues.
C2: Social media can help me to communicate with my colleagues about homework and group projects.
C3: The use of social media can increase my performance in my courses.
C4: The use of social media can enhance my interaction with my colleagues.
C5: The use of social media can enhance my interaction with my instructors.
C6: The use of social media can improve our classroom discussions.
C7: The use of social media resources can support me to do my homework.
C8: The use of social media can support me to work in groups.
C9: The use of social media can make me more interested to learn.
C10: The use of social media can make the lectures easier to be understood.
C11: The use of social media can support the courses with both audio and visual materials.
C12: Social media can support a variety of learning activities.
C13: The use of social media can improve the communication of announcements about courses, classes, and university.
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Al-Qaysi, N., Mohamad-Nordin, N. & Al-Emran, M. What leads to social learning? Students’ attitudes towards using social media applications in Omani higher education. Educ Inf Technol 25, 2157–2174 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10074-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10074-6