Social media in higher education: students’ acceptance of social media use

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0Yang et al. (2010) concluded that different users of information technologies in higher education have different approaches to information technology. Teachers expect to maintain control over the teaching/learning process as in the traditional teaching/learning environment, while students appreciate the use of tools such as interviews, advertisements, etc., aimed at socialization and communication. In the context of education, the issue of acceptance of social media as a new technology in the teaching/learning environment is relevant as a precondition for the improvement of the teaching/learning process. The literature on information systems states that the adoption of new information systems is a prerequisite for the intentionality of use and the use of information systems themselves. Researchers actively investigate the acceptance and use of various information technologies in multiple educational contexts (Liu et al., 2019; Li, 2020). The aim of this study is to investigate the factors that determine students’ acceptance of social media – in other words, social media adoption and use. The object of the research is students’ acceptance of social media in higher education studies and its use in the process of teaching/learning. The objectives of the research consist of the selection of a theoretical model of social media based on literature studies and analysis, the empirical verification of this model, and the study of the factors determining students’ social media acceptance. The research questions are the following: What is the level of students’ social media acceptance? How do students accept social media in the teaching/learning environment? Is there a correlation between behavioural intentionality and use? How do students’ demographic factors affect social media acceptance