Towards the Choice of Better Social Media Platform for Knowledge Delivery: Exploratory Study in University of Ilorin

Abstract

Rising from the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, all schools in Nigeria were put under lock and key, like other countries. This was to curtail the rapid spread of the virus, while the medical practitioners were in the laboratories. But due to longer period of shutdown to formal education, most higher institutions instantaneously keyed-in to any available social media platform (SMP) without understudying its efficiency and effectiveness for knowledge transfer. The consequences of this include non-satisfactory knowledge transfer, most especially, by the learners; hence, aim of knowledge impact is jeopardized. This study therefore is aimed to fill the gap to correct the existing damage, and prevent the likelihood of not-afore-put-to-test syndrome in the subsequent choice of SMP. To achieve this, University of Ilorin is chosen as the territory survey for being the most sought-after University for admission in Nigeria. Quantitative research methods were adopted, being the most appropriate for this study in the literature. A total of 200 respondents participated voluntarily with the adoption of Slovin’s formula for the sampling techniques; 156 students and 44 lecturers. The data collection process was performed through a survey comprising demographic, dichotomous, multiple choice, and open-ended questionnaire to capture detail information for the research work. Simple descriptive statistics was employed for the analysis. Our findings reveal that out of the seventeen SMPs put to test, zoom platform ranks the most effective and efficient for the knowledge delivery and acquisition by the lecturers and students of the University respectively, based on the designed principles. Therefore, making Zoom platform the most preferred for e-learning. This study recommends that choice of satisfactory SMP for knowledge delivery should be utmost concern of all institutions before embarking on virtual learning system