INFORMATION RETRIEVAL THROUGH MOODLE (LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM) AND FACEBOOK (SOCIAL MEDIA) AMONGST STUDENTS OF THE NATIONAL DEFENCE UNIVERSITY OF MALAYSIA (NDUM

Abstract

In higher education level of study, students often face difficulties in retrieving information especially academic information. In today’s modern world, it is found that there are many ways to retrieve information such as through Moodle, which is a Learning Management System and Facebook, which is a Social Media. The objectives of this study are to identify the preference between retrieving information through Moodle and Facebook, to investigate the reasons why students choose Moodle or Facebook and, to find whether there is correlation between the use of Moodle and Facebook in information retrieval activities. This study uses a quantitative approach where a questionnaire was constructed using Google Form. The sampling used in the study is a convenient sampling which focuses on students from five faculties at the National Defence University of Malaysia, in which questionnaires are distributed to 150 respondents. The data from the questionnaire are analysed using descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, inferential analysis, and thematic analysis. Descriptive analysis is conducted to collect the frequency, percentage, and mean values of data. The reliability analysis is conducted to six questions on Moodle and six questions on Facebook, inferential analysis is conducted to the Dependent Variable and Independent Variables of study questions, and lastly, thematic analysis is conducted to analyse the answers to the open-ended questions. The finding of the study exposed that most students preferred to use the Moodle in retrieving academic information where they claimed, it is a better platform to retrieve information as it has the features which are suitable and seen by the students as a more valid and reliable source of receiving academic information. Nevertheless, there is a fair percentage of students who preferred Facebook over Moodle. This implies that the disparity of students’ preferences in retrieving information should be taken into consideration by educationists when preparing teaching and learning.