Business Education Students’ Perception of Educational Usage of Social Networking Sites in Tertiary Institutions in Anambra State

Abstract

The study sought to establish from business education students in tertiary institutions in Anambra state Nigeria, their usage of social networking sites, educational activities they use it for and problems they face using social networking sites. Population of the study was made up of 577 penultimate and final year business education students of four tertiary institutions in Anambra state. Proportionate sampling technique was used to select 236 students for the study. Three research questions and one hypothesis guided the study. A structured questionnaire was used to gather information for the study. The data collection instrument was subjected to a reliability test which yielded reliability coefficients of 0.70, 0.63 and 0.80 using Cronbach alpha. Mean, frequency count and percentages were used to analyze data in order to answer the research questions while t-test was used to test the hypothesis at 0.05 level of significance. Findings revealed that business education students spend two to three hours on social networking sites daily; they rarely used social networking sites for educational activities and faced the problem of poor network service. The respondents did not differ significantly in their responses regarding academic usage of social networking sites as a result of gender. Consequently, it was recommended, among others, that business education students should be taught to harness the educational potentials of social networking sites as to effectively use these sites for educational purposes.