scholarly journals Influence of attitudes to social media use in professional learning on students’ online journalism self-efficacy beliefs

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 160
Author(s):  
Joseph Njuguna ◽  
Hellen K Mberia ◽  
Margaret Jjuuko

With a wide variety of easily-accessible internet tools, social media have revolutionized the way people access, create and share information. Apart from facilitating social networking, these online platforms are also considered critical enablers of professional competence development, with perceptions of their use in promoting learning – in a domain like journalism – gaining currency. Using Rwanda as a case study, this article explores students’ attitudes towards social media use in professional learning and how these predict their self-efficacy for online journalism work. Empirical data was gathered from mass communication students from five Rwandan universities (n=143), who completed a researcher-constructed ‘online journalism self-efficacy’ (OJSE) survey. Descriptive findings indicated that the students are highly efficacious in most online journalism skills. Inferential statistical analysis demonstrate that the students’ beliefs, feelings and actions regarding social media as professional learning tools, significantly correlated with the students’ online journalism self-efficacy. The results disconfirm the null hypothesis that negate the existence of a significant relationship between these variables. In light of the study’s results, educators need to leverage the students’ positive social media attitudes to enhance and innovative student-centred teaching and learning approaches – where learners harness the affordances of the social media tools for their professional growth. Keywords: Online Journalism, Journalism students, Attitudes, Self-efficacy, RwandaHow to cite this article:Njuguna, J., Mberia, H.K. & Jjuuko, M. 2020. Influence of attitudes to social media use in professional learning on students’ online journalism self-efficacy beliefs. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 4(2): 160-179. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v4i2.134.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qaisar Khalid Mahmood ◽  
Sara Rizvi Jafree ◽  
Sahifa Mukhtar ◽  
Florian Fischer

Although the role of social media in infectious disease outbreaks is receiving increasing attention, little is known about the mechanisms by which social media use affects risk perception and preventive behaviors during such outbreaks. This study aims to determine whether there are any relationships between social media use, preventive behavior, perceived threat of coronavirus, self-efficacy, and socio-demographic characteristics. The data were collected from 310 respondents across Pakistan using an online cross-sectional survey. Reliability analyses were performed for all scales and structural equational modeling was used to identify the relationships between study variables. We found that: (i) social media use predicts self-efficacy (β = 0.25, p < 0.05) and perceived threat of coronavirus (β = 0.54, p < 0.05, R2 = 0.06), and (ii) preventive behavior is predicted by self-efficacy and perceived threat of coronavirus (R = 0.10, p < 0.05). Therefore, these results indicate the importance of social media's influence on health-related behaviors. These findings are valuable for health administrators, governments, policymakers, and social scientists, specifically for individuals whose situations are similar to those in Pakistan.


Author(s):  
Eddie Mumba Mulenga ◽  
José María Marbàn

Social media technologies have reshaped our lives today and Zambian teachers do a massive use of smart phones, tablets, and other portable tools. In addition, they are continually searching for forefront innovations. Frequently, the utilization of these gadgets is not in manners foreseen by innovation advocates. This study focuses on exploring the use of social media platforms and the impact of such social networking services in the teaching and learning of mathematics by pre-service teachers. To explore pre-service teachers’ use of social media in their teaching and learning experiences, the authors administered an adapted and validated research instrument via a quantitative survey system to a sample of 102 pre-service teachers from the Copperbelt University. Analysis of variance and multiple regression analysis were used to test the interplay of relationships between pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards the use of social media based on year of study and gender, social media use and classroom integration, social media use, and mathematics pedagogy. Further, a statistical test was run to show whether positive correlations existed or not. Results disclosed that respondents showed an average use of social media tools in mathematics and provide a prediction model for pre-service teachers’ future integration of social media in the teaching and learning of mathematics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuela Calandri ◽  
Federica Graziano ◽  
Luca Rollé

The study of the psychological effects of social media use on adolescents’ adjustment has long been the focus of psychological research, but results are still inconclusive. In particular, there is a lack of research on the positive and negative developmental outcomes and on possible moderating variables, especially concerning early adolescence. To fill these gaps in literature, the present study longitudinally investigated the relationships between social media use, depressive symptoms, affective well-being and life satisfaction, as well as the moderating role of emotional self-efficacy and gender. The study involved 336 Italian early adolescents (mean age = 13, sd = 0.3; 48% girls) who completed an anonymous self-report questionnaire twice within a year. Main results showed that higher social media use was related to higher depressive symptoms, lower affective well-being and lower life satisfaction among girls with lower emotional self-efficacy. Conversely, high social media use was related to higher affective well-being and higher life satisfaction for girls with higher emotional self-efficacy. Results are discussed in relation to their implications for risk prevention and health promotion among early adolescents. In particular, our results suggest that promoting emotional self-efficacy can be very helpful in making the use of social media an opportunity for well-being and life satisfaction rather than a developmental risk.


Pedagogika ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 125 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Nijolė Burkšaitienė ◽  
Jolita Šliogerienė ◽  
Giedrė Valūnaitė - Oleškevičienė

The article examines lecturer creativity in the context of social media use in the process of teaching and learning. Social media have been recently extensively used in educational settings, including higher education, and are becoming an integral part of the process of teaching and learning. Learning supported by the use of modern technologies has made creativity and its expression particularly important. The concept of creativity is multifaceted and still under development. Applying social media in the process of teaching and learning, mastering social media and using them for teaching, lecturers get involved in the continuous process, the success of which is determined by creative personal characteristics and the creativity-supportive environment. Lecturer creativity determined by the intertwined factors of the environment and personal characteristics stands out as the impetus of social media use in the process of teaching and learning. The present qualitative phenomenological research focuses on the factors influencing lecturer creativity while using social media in the process of teaching and learning at the university. The study of the phenomenon is based on lecturers’ “lived” experience while using social media in this process. Two major categories related to the factors affecting lecturer creativity were established, including external factors that promote lecturer creativity and internal factors that predetermine successful use of social media by lecturers in the process of teaching and learning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (11) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Yan Huang ◽  
Jie Zhang

Social media is becoming a platform for student entrepreneurship; however, little is known about the influence of social media use on students' entrepreneurial intention. This study investigated social media use as a predictor of students' entrepreneurial intention, with consideration given to the mediating role of self-efficacy. Questionnaires were given to undergraduate students at three Chinese public universities, and 524 effective responses were received. We used structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses. The results show that social media use was indirectly related to students' entrepreneurial intention via self-efficacy. Our findings extend the literature on the social media use–entrepreneurial intention link, and highlight the importance of self-efficacy in this link. Thus, educators could endorse social media tools and encourage students to incorporate these into their entrepreneurial activities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (14) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Ayesha K. Hashim ◽  
Jeffrey P. Carpenter

Teachers are increasingly turning to social media to facilitate informal opportunities for professional learning, yet we know little about the motivational factors that prompt teachers’ social media use. In this chapter, we propose a conceptual framework that researchers can use to unpack the varied motivational factors that lead teachers to engage with social media for professional learning. We argue that the extant literature on teachers’ social media use lacks cohesion in terms of identifying the full range of motivational factors that inform teacher practice and that can lead teachers to engage with social media spaces with different functionalities (e.g., curating content, building community, monetizing teacher resources). We draw on utility-based theory from economics to understand how teachers negotiate between different motivational preferences when deciding to engage with different social media platforms, foregrounding both individual and social preferences and how the context of districts, schools, grade levels, classrooms, and teachers’ backgrounds might influence teacher preferences and social media use. We conclude with a discussion of how this conceptual framework can inform future research.


2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 231-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hussain Alshahrani ◽  
Diane Rasmussen Pennington

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate sources of self-efficacy for researchers and the sources’ impact on the researchers’ use of social media for knowledge sharing. It is a continuation of a larger study (Alshahrani and Rasmussen Pennington, 2018). Design/methodology/approach The authors distributed an online questionnaire to researchers at the University of Strathclyde (n=144) and analysed the responses using descriptive statistics. Findings Participants relied on personal mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and emotional arousal for social media use. These elements of self-efficacy mostly led them to use it effectively, with a few exceptions. Research limitations/implications The convenience sample utilised for this study, which included academic staff, researchers and PhD students at one university, is small and may not be entirely representative of the larger population. Practical implications This study contributes to the existing literature on social media and knowledge sharing. It can help researchers understand how they can develop their self-efficacy and its sources in order to enhance their online professional presence. Additionally, academic institutions can use these results to inform how they can best encourage and support their researchers in improving their professional social media use. Originality/value Researchers do rely on their self-efficacy and its sources to use social media for knowledge sharing. These results can help researchers and their institutions eliminate barriers and improve online engagement with colleagues, students, the public and other relevant research stakeholders.


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