Abstract
PERCEPTIONS OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ON WHATSAPP IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS
Nowadays internet technologies and communication concepts have become an indispensable part of life. Household ICT Usage Survey conducted by TUİK presents that the proportion of the entire population of individuals using the Internet in Turkey was 66.8% according to the data from 2017. The development and use of Internet technologies has led to the development of new media concepts in the field of communication. The WhatsApp application, which allows easy access of visual and written materials between teachers and students, is one of the possibilities offered by the new media. In this study, the perceptions of the undergraduate students on the use of the WhatsApp application in the learning environments have been investigated. The new scale was finalized by first compiling items from previous studies that were using perception scales used in social media and secondly by adding different items and lastly by conducting a validity and reliability study. The study was carried out with 343 students in the central campus of Adnan Menderes University using simple random sampling method. According to the results of the survey, the use of social networks in the classroom environment is likely to increase the success, while the contrast between students' social networking and non-participation is remarkable. It is understood from the survey results that the students frequently (85.7%) use WhatsApp for educational purposes and process. And also majority of the students preferred to use WhatsApp in educational settings for personal information / photo sharing (63.3%), homework / project studies (59.5%), discussion of a topic related to the course / homework (% 60,9), sharing content (59,5%), and asking questions (72,3%). The originality and value of this research lies that it tries to put out the current situation on student perceptions and key aspects of how social networks can be used in the context of education in order to increase the effectiveness of the learning process.
Keywords
WhatsApp, Social Network, New and Traditional Media, Social Media Integration into Educational Setti
