The Use of Social Media Platforms for Academic Purposes: A Case Study of Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State

Abstract

This study examined students’ perceptions of how social media can be used to support teaching and learning in Nigerian Universities using Federal University of Technology, Minna as a case study. Three research questions and three null hypotheses guided the study. The population was made up of 550 final year students of the School of Science and Technology Education out of which a total of 155 students were randomly selected for the study. The study was a qualitative research which involved the use of questionnaire as instrument for data collection. The instrument was validated by three experts in Information and Communication Technology. The reliability coefficient index computed for the instrument was 0.81using Cronbach Alpha formula. The data were analysed using mean and Spearman Correlation Coefficient. The findings revealed among others that students are aware of social media tools that can be used to perform academic tasks such as Images and photographs, document creation and presentations; while students also classified Communication, Videos and instant messaging as the most familiar, frequent and important academic activities carried out on social media platform. Furthermore, the results showed no significant correlation between gender and awareness; gender and frequency; gender and importance. Awareness was highly correlated to the frequency and moderately correlated to the importance. Frequency was highly correlated to the importance. Consequently, it was recommended among others that since awareness of social media platforms roughly translated into actual usage, more enlightenment campaign should be carried out by the university Community to encourage students on the use of these social media platforms.