Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

This study investigates fifteen social media platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, Google+, etc.) that are germane to the teaching-learning process. The participants drawn from the Faculty of Education were 330. A descriptive survey research design was adopted. Four research questions and two null hypotheses guided the study. The research instrument for data collection was a questionnaire tagged “Trainees’ Use and Readiness to Adopt Social Media in Knowledge Transfer” and Focus Group Discussion Guide (FGDG). The data collected were analysed with the use of descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings revealed that teacher trainees were highly aware (79.3) of social media use in the teaching-learning process and the utilisation of social media among them was to some extent. Whatsapp was the most utilized, followed by Facebook, Wikipedia, Google+, Tube, Ask.com, Instagram, Twitter, Slideshare, WordPress, Viber, Del.iccio.us, Pinterest, and Flickr. Though males and females did not differ in the extent of utilization of these social media, teacher trainees varied across departments. Some of the barriers militating against the effective use of social media are financial, poor network services, lack of Smartphone that is internet compliant, erratic power supply, distraction, technical know-how on the part of students, and lack of encouragement by the course lecturers. The study recommends, among others, that faculty management should ensure that teacher trainees have access to free Wi-Fi to be able to connect to the Internet and that teacher trainees be encouraged by the faculty members in various courses they teach to utilise social media.