Usage and Perceptions of Social Media Tools among Higher Education Instructors

Abstract

This paper tried to investigate the current situation of using social media as tools for e-learning to support learning at an emerging university in the south of Saudi Arabia. It also examined the benefits of using social media tools in higher education and the important role that these tools can play to facilitate the educational process. Additionally, the barriers that lecturers could face during the use of social media tools in the educational process were examined. Participants in this study were 10 lecturers. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data for this study. The results indicated that some of the interviewees had very positive attitudes towards using social media as tools for e-learning and felt that these tools were extremely effective instructional tools and should be integrated into the university curricula and that tutors should start using them as tools to aid the other learning environments. However, the results indicated that the major barriers to using these tools in learning were a distraction, opposing Islamic religious teachings, privacy issues, and cyberbullying. The study recommended that this study could be replicated at other Saudi universities to investigate factors and barriers that might affect Saudi students' attitudes toward using social media to support learning.Index Terms-Saudi Arabia, social media tools, higher education, advantages of social media use, disadvantages to social media use.

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