AN INVESTIGATION INTO HOW SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES CAN BE USED AS A TEACHING AND LEARNING TOOL TO BUSINESS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT FIRST YEAR STUDENTS

Social networking sites is often seen as the key driver of communication of nowadays. A growing number of schools and universities, teachers and lecturers are using social media in the learning process. Social media is a tool that teachers can use to make their classroom more engaging. Students are increasing their expectations toward social networking sites to be effective component of educational experiences both outside and inside the classroom. The main interest of the study is to investigate how social networking sites can be used as an effective tool in teaching and learning for Business and Information Management (BIM) first year students at Durban University Technology in the Department of Information and Corporate Management. The main aim of this study was to provide recommendations on how social networking sites can be used for academic purposes in order to improve students’ engagement with their studies and also determine how social networking sites can be utilized with a purpose of increasing BIM students’ performance and survey the positive usage and contribution of social networking sites toward teaching and learning.

Data was collected from 100 students out of the population of 246 students using simple random sampling. Quantitative method was used. Questionnaires were used to collect data.

The major findings of the study showed that most of the BIM first year students were using social media for various purposes but the main purpose was using social media for academic reasons, which automatically showed that social networking sites can be used as an effective tool for teaching and learning.

Once of the main recommendations of the study was that the Department should create a platform where first year students will be required to blog at least twice a week; this will give students an opportunity to view each other’s blog post, this will create a strong community amongst them. Students should be encouraged to use formal language, spelling and grammar and this will increase their ability to communicate in a formal manner.