Integration of social media for smart pedagogy: initial perceptions of senior high school students in Ghana

Abstract

Social media have become art of students ‘life as a result of their features and the predominant mobile smart medium of usage. In the advanced world, the social platforms have provided affordances for integration in education providing smart learning environments. However, within the Sub-Saharan African region, especially in Ghana, this phenomenon is emerging and warrants an investigation into the initial perceptions of students on integrating mobile phones and social media in the Ghanaian educational system. It is against this background that this study seeks to investigate senior high school students ‘perception of the use of social media for edagogical purposes. Bandura’s social learning theory and Vygotsky’s social constructivism theory formed the theoretical foundation of the study. The descriptive survey design was adopted for this study with data collected through a questionnaire. In all, 200 students were selected from a senior high school using purposive and simple random sampling techniques. Statistical tools such as means, standard deviation, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression were employed for analysis. The study found that most of the students had positive perceptions towards the integration of social media and its effects on teaching and learning. There were no statistical differences in perception based on the mean scores of ages of students, year of study and programme of study in terms of social media integration in education and effects on teaching and learning. Furthermore, the perception on social media integration in education predicted the effects on integrating social media in teaching and learning. Consequently, both the perceptions of social media integration in education and its effects on teaching and learning predicted actual usage for learning. Based on the results recommendations were provided on policy and practice of social media use for academic purposes in secondary schools in Ghana