The Impact of Social Media on Higher Education in Kosovo: The Student’s Perspective

Abstract

With the increase in the number of internet users, the use of social media has grown over the past decade. More concretely the usage has progressively grown from personal to also formal aspects. University students are active users of social media for academic as well as for personal purposes. Social Media represents one of the most direct and effective tools for students to communicate and interact with the proper subjects. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of social media platform (email, social networks, blogs, instant messaging, etc.) in higher education in Kosovo, from the perspective of a student. Especially, in relation to the services offered by this platform in educational institutions where they study. In this study both primary and secondary sources of data were included. The secondary data are provided through literature gathered from published research articles. To answer the research questions , the primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire , that was sent to students in both electronic and hard copy version. The students were recruited from several higher education institutions in Kosovo. The sample was chosen having in consideration the statistical rules of representation. Data analysis was enabled through applied software Adobe Acrobat e-Forms (Adobe Acrobat forms central) and statistical interpretation through Excel format. The outcomes of this study show that there is an increase of social media usage within the students of higher education in Kosovo. Social Media has an impact and is considered as an effective tool by students about study related activities (activities related to subjects, research, group activities, projects, internship , etc.) and positive influence when it comes to communication and interactivity among them. Although, still it is recommended that the institutions where they study should be more active in the social media platforms, especially through Email (44 %), Facebook (37 %) and Google + (13 %).

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n2p155