Abstract
Social media networks are fundamentally changing the way we socialize, communicate, and perhaps the way students learn. This paper explored the patterns of pre-service teachers’ adoption and their perceived usefulness of social media. The participants were 388 pre-service teachers from one tertiary institution in Nigeria. The social constructivist theory, the Theory of Planned Behaviour and the Technology Acceptance Model were used to underpin the study. The result revealed that Facebook and WhatsApp were the most common social media applications used by the participants and they use the media chiefly for socialising. With respect to the time they spent on social media daily, 310 (80%) spent at least one hour on social media on average daily while 196 (50%) spent over two hours on average every day. The relationships between social media subscriptions, and perceived usefulness of social media for socialising and for communication, were found to be positive and statistically significant. Similarly, the relationships between the time spent on social media and perceived usefulness of social media for socialising and also for study were found to be positive and statistically significant. The results suggest that the pre-service teachers are adopters of social media and perceive the media useful not only for social activities but also for academic purposes. However, they have not really adopted the social media for academic purposes. The research findings make a compelling case for the incorporation of social media into the teaching and learning context.
Highlights
There has been phenomenal advancement in information communication technology (ICT) in general and the World Wide Web and mobile technologies in particular over the last two decades
It is my belief that pre-service teachers’ adoption of a technology will influence their use of the technology when they get into service and concomitantly influence the younger generation’s adoption of the technology. It is against this background that this paper explored the pattern of adoption of social media technology by pre-service teachers
WhatsApp, 2go, and Twitter were the predominant social media used by the pre-service teachers as shown by the number of registered users of the media in Table 1, with Facebook being the most popular social media application among the pre-service teachers
Summary
There has been phenomenal advancement in information communication technology (ICT) in general and the World Wide Web and mobile technologies in particular over the last two decades. The evolution of the World Wide Web has impacted immensely on human interaction, behaviour and knowledge acquisition This evolution has created tremendous changes in people’s lives. The connection means that individuals can interact and share information as if they were face-to-face About this issue, it is pointed out that advancement in ICT “... Technological data in the classroom has changed “the scope of learning by allowing flexible and instant access to rich digital resources” [5]. This access to rich digital resources means that students with laptops, smart phones, and tablet personal computers (tablets) can connect to online discussions and discourses
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