Implications of the social media usage on education performance of undergraduates; Case study based on University of Colombo

Abstract

Global connectivity becomes fast and advanced with the introduction of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Viber, and Imo. This study investigated the social media network participation and the academic performance among university students at the University of Colombo. The data collection methods used were a structured questionnaire and participatory semi-structured online interviews. Through the structured questionnaire, the basic information was gathered, and the participatory online interview was used to collect in-depth data about the time spent on education and social media. The study population was all the undergraduates (600) in the Faculty of Arts, who are following ICT as a subject. A sample of 234 undergraduates was randomly selected on the recommendations on sample size by Krejcie and Morgan (1970). There were no gender differences in this regard. The highly used social media is WhatsApp (92%) followed by Facebook (78%), and YouTube (67%). Out of the total respondents, 60% stated that they use social media for academic works such as academic discussion groups in WhatsApp and Facebook. According to Pearson's correlation analysis, academic performance is related with social media usage by undergraduates (r = 0.472, p 0.000 > 0.05). Also, all the dimensions of social media usage are positively correlated with academic performance; frequency of access, time spent on social media and type of information shared/posted by indicating statistically significant, moderate to substantial positive relationship with academic performance. The relationship is statistically significant too. The findings confirmed that all the determinants have an impact on the academic performance and that there is a moderately positive relationship between the social media usage and the academic performance. It can be concluded that, social networking sites, especially WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube can be used successfully to support collaborative learning.