Abstract
INVESTIGATION OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TEACHER CANDIDATES’ SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS E-LEARNING
The aim of this study is to determine teacher candidates’ social media use and attitudes towards e-learning and to reveal the possible relationship between the two variables. In the study, the relational survey method was used from the descriptive survey models. The population of the study consisted of teacher candidates who were studying at KahramanmaraşSütçü İmam University Faculty of Education in the spring of 2016-2017 academic year. The sample is composed of 282 teacher candidates selected from this population through simple randomsampling. The data of the study were obtained using the “social media attitude scale” developed by OtrarandArgın (2016) and “a general attitude scale towards e-learning” developed by Haznedar and Baran (2012). The SPSS 21.0 program was used during the analysis of the research data. The independent samples t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Pearson moment product correlation coefficient and regression analysis were used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the study, it was determined that the prospective teachers’ attitudes towards social media and e-learning weremore positive than the middle level. When the attitudes of prospective teachers towards social media and e-learning were examined according to their demographic characteristics, only the attitudes towards e-learning differed according to the class level, but they did not differ in terms of the variables of department and gender. As another result of the study, it was found that there was a linear, positive and significant relationship between teacher candidates’ attitudes towards social media and their attitudes toward e-learning at a low level. Teacher candidates’ use of social media was found to predict 1% of their attitudes towardse-learning.
Keywords
Social media, e-learning, attitude, teacher.
