Awareness and use of social bookmarking services by final year students in a Nigerian private university

Abstract

Social computing is one of the renascent features of the web that has made it highly interactive. One of such social tools in the web is the social bookmarking services. It has been reported that social bookmarking services may be the least known social media network by students. Given that social media has been predicted to revolutionize learning it is therefore imperative to study the awareness and use of social media tools like social bookmarking services by undergraduate students. The survey research design was employed and questionnaire used to collect data. Using the SPSS statistical tool, the data were analysed and the result presented in simple percentages. It was found that the students are largely (60.9%) not aware of social bookmarking services. Their familiarity with and usage of the services were very low as very little proportions of the respondents can either “use”, “are using” or “have used” some of the social bookmarking services. With 28%, meeting people with similar research interest is the most beneficial feature of social bookmarking services to the students. But overall, the students (52.2%) agree that social bookmarking services are useful for their academic work.

Keywords: social bookmarking, social media, undergraduate students, private university