The adoption of social media by adult learners as an e-learning platform

Padhma Moodley ()
Additional contact information
Padhma Moodley: DURBAN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

No 8711484, Proceedings of International Academic Conferences from International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences

Abstract: Recent technological developments have increased the platforms and capacity for learning at HEIs. Whilst the adoption of web 2.0 tools by undergraduates continues to be a focus in e-learning discourse, attention should be given to adult learners who are forced to adapt to the spate of technologically innovative educational practices. This paper, explores the experience of adult learners use of social media which is used as an e-learning platform for a course in Research Methodology (RMBA 201). A Facebook page was set up and monitored for the duration of the course which was regularly updated with course slides (in the form of videos) and notifications. Non-probability sampling technique was used in the selection of the sample. Only adult learners? who accessed the prescribed social media designed for the course were eligible to participate in this study. This meant that purposive sampling was used to generate the desired sample. Fifty seven adult learners completed a closed ended questionnaire. The study reveals that although the adult learners were slow to grasp the concept of social media as an e-learning platform, their interest grew exponentially week on week. Furthermore, the test periods saw immense activity from adult learners on the social media, which was indicative of the social media?s usefulness as an e-learning platform.

Keywords: social media; e-learning; adult learners; diffusion of innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 1 page
Date: 2019-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pay
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 48th International Academic Conference, Copenhagen, Jul 2019, pages 103-103

Downloads: (external link)
https://iises.net/proceedings/iises-international- ... 87&iid=036&rid=11484 First version, 2019

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sek:iacpro:8711484

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Proceedings of International Academic Conferences from International Institute of Social and Economic Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klara Cermakova ().