The Proficiency of Undergraduates in Utilizing Social Media for Learning in Nigeria

Students use social media for social activities more than learning but studies on the proficiency for learning has been less researched. This study therefore assessed the undergraduate students’ proficiency’ level of utilizing social media for learning in Nigeria. The study employed the quantitative research method. Four hundred and fifty (450) respondents were randomly sampled across universities in Nigeria on which a structured questionnaire was administered on the students. The research questions were answered using mean, while t-test statistic was used to test the two hypotheses. Results of the research revealed that the proficiency level of undergraduates on the utilization of social media for learning was high and there was no significant difference between male and female undergraduates’ utilization and undergraduates’ proficiency towards the utilization of social media for learning. The study concluded that undergraduate students have good proficiency level on the utilization of social media for learning. Article History Received : April 2020 Accepted : April 2020 Published : April 2020


INTRODUCTION
The advent of information and communication technology has made the world a global village which has permeated the social, economic, business, education among others. This century (21 st century), is considered to be an information age. Communication being a section in information and communication technology has been perceived as a process of transferring information between two or more individuals, while Information has been perceived as the knowledge, facts and data you get about something or someone. Information and communication technology has been the fundamental building stone for modern society especially in the developed country. As such, Information and communication technology can be said to be the major benchmark which distinguish a developed country from developing countries and the underdeveloped countries. Akarowhe (2017) explains that the term information and communication technology (ICT) is a convergence from information technology (IT) and communication technology (CT) and defines ICT in education as the process in which ICT devices are used by teachers in the classroom for impacting knowledge on the learner(s). According to Khan, Khan, Din, Ismail & Rafid (2015), information and communication technology (ICT) refers to technologies that provide access to information through communication. There could definitely be an increase in students' academic performance as well teachers' job performance whence innovative technologies are adequately and efficiently adopted or adapted into the teaching and learning process.
Just like the fuel in the vehicle and the blood in the body, so is technologies to education. learning institutions are modernizing their campuses with innovations in technology in order to meet up with the ever-changing demands of the digital-native students (Perez, 2015). Thus, it has been evidently clear that teaching and learning is enhanced when technology is appropriately integrated in all the facets of education.
The one sided communication provided by Web 1.0 has been replaced by two sided communication provided by Web 2.0 (Aghaei & Farsani, 2012). The Web 2.0 tools such as social networking sites, blogs, web application emergence has led to users having the experiences on how this tools are changing the daily activities of human. New practices of sharing information have emerged such as Flickr for sharing photos, YouTube for sharing videos, Slideshare for sharing presentations and also new mechanisms for content production, sharing, communication and collaboration have also emerged such as blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and so on.
ICT in education is a comprehensive approach to innovative educational systems, methods and management with the aid of new technology (Fakomogbon, et al. 2017). Similarly, ICT in education encompasses all the contemporary digital tools such as computers, accessories and internet that can be used in education to fulfil it is goals (Abdulrahman & Soetan, 2017). ICT encourages students to improve their literacy and numeracy skills and to recognise their existing abilities. It also helps both independent and collaborative learning experiences; learners identify areas where they need assistance and support. In the same vain, learners can complete their education from any location as long as they have access to the ICT resources (Amosa, Ogunlade, Ogunlade, & Obielodan, 2016).
Information systems (IS) is concerned with the investigation of Information Technologies (IT) impacts on individual, organizational and societal levels (Lucas Jr, Agarwal, Clemons, El Sawy, & Weber, 2013). One of the recent most impactful IT phenomena is the emergence and spread of a sub-set of IT technologies referred to as social media (Kane, Alavi, Labianca, & Borgatti, 2014;Kapoor et al., 2017). Social media can be considered as an information technology platform in which user communities can search (Miller, et al., 2016).
Social media can be viewed as an incorporate tool with a number of websites and application tools. Social Media is a term used to mean the widely used and acceptable means of communication such as radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and the internet that reach or influence people with the aim of connecting people with one another in a community. Basically, social media perform two functions which are: to connect people and share information widely. Lacking a clear definition, it is uncertain and disputable whether e.g. findings from a twitter-study would apply to a WhatsApp-study and so on. Researchers have viewed social media as an incorporated tool with a number of websites and application tools (Athukorala, 2018).
Manning (2014) classified social media into email, texters, blogs, message boards, connection sites, social networking sites and game and entertainment. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) classified social media into six different classes; collaborative Project (Wikipedia), blogs and micro blogs (Twitter), content communities (Youtube), social networking site (Facebook; 2go; BB chat), virtual Game World (World of war craft) and virtual Second World (Second life). From these two categories, we can deduce the following categories and their potentials. The use of social media is a tool for learning is a coin with two sides; one side being the good and the other being the bad side.
Whether the coin is fair to learning (in an environment) or not depends on the policies employed in the environment to make learning suitable through social media, the level of creativity of the individual (teachers and students) in the environment, and the positive potential the environment is able to foresee in learning with social media. Lau, Lui and Chu (2017) opined that social media represent an engine for aided students which represent an engine in forming and building their interests in academic career. Also, Cox and McLeod (2014) supported that social media stimulate the relationship and communication between teachers and students but also with parents and community members and in this way professional learning communities are being built.
Adapting platforms that are not meant for learning is not an easy task but is achievable with appropriate guidelines and planning for both teachers and students (Jamari, Mohd Zaid, Mohamed, Abdullah & Aris, 2017). Facebook can be positive tool for teaching and learning but can also be a negative tool that disengage students if it is not appropriately utilize (Said, Tahir, and Ali, 2014) likewise social media in general.
Fausto-Sterling (2012) also agreed that gender is shaped by the dynamics of physical, social, and emotional experiences and becomes the basis of future identity transformations. Gender differences in ICT (especially social media) use are explored in their social complexity since one must consider that gender is not universal (Eduarda, 2017). There are about five times more men than women among those who study computing at a tertiary level (Organisation for Economic co-operation and Development (OECD), 2015), which may be related to feelings of incompetence (low self-efficacy) by girls and women.
Bujala (2012) established that men are likely to have more time for the use of social net-work because of gender expectations and roles but Volkovich, Laniado, Kappler and Kantenbrunner (2014) suggest contrary that women outnumbered men for most social networking sites with the exception of LinkedIn. Few researches on the gender differences in usage patterns of Social Networking Sites (SNS) highlighted that the male gender used social networking sites for networking, making new friends, and looking for latent dates and enjoying games; whereas feminine gender used it for relationship maintenance (Rousseau and Puttaraju, 2014) and posting public message (Muscanell, 2012).
Kasahara (2017) reported from the result that female was most likely to prevent certain people from accessing their social media content, males were more likely to use a gaming console for about six hours per day. Idemudia, Raisinghani, Adeola, and Achebo (2017) opined that behaviours that accompany seeking data differs for men and women, and additionally the employment of social media tools further reinforces this belief whereas males square measure the primary to adopt the tools, their focus is on exploitation the tools for job-related activities. Hu, Gu and Zhang (2017) explained that developed cultural intelligence enables individuals to better master personal and vicarious experiences through social media attendance. Social media has been used to connect students in an online classroom setting or distance learning settings to help with communication.
Globally the internet is a blessing to mankind. It harbours much information and offers tones of services to individuals. A major and important one of those services is the World Wide Web (WWW) which is a host for social media platforms. Ever since the emergence of social media, it has been of great importance to the life of every undergraduate. On social media, information spreads faster. Through the advent of social media platforms, wrong social norms and ethics is believed to have erupted which is of a major concern to those who value good information and follow good ethical social conducts. Social networks have united a lot of undergraduates into an online world where they spend countless hours browsing profiles, meeting people, exploring relationships, finding and acquiring necessary information. In the application of evaluative actions which are similar to what they use traditional resources for, students seemed to have developed their strategies; for instance, checking disclaimer notes in order to assess the quality of information accessed through social media.
Research is the systematic and rigorous investigation aimed at the discovery of previously unknown phenomena, the development of explanatory theory and its application to new situations and the construction of original works of significant intellectual merit (Mahmood, 2011). Learning theories can be referred to as those concepts, philosophies, and ideologies disseminated by great educationists and psychologists to aid the progressions of human learning. Several prominent theories were designed to explain learning, especially those promulgated by Watson, Pavlov, Thorndike, Skinner, Tolman, Kohler, Spence, Miller and their modern followers (McLeod, 2017).
Each of the theories of learning has its own specific qualities and context determines which is suitable and should be embraced with respect with time. Ethically conduct research adhere to standards of scientific inquiry; develop a systematic approach to data management including data entry, cleaning, tracking, and maintaining confidentiality; utilize appropriate data analysis techniques consistent with the purpose and design of the study; interpret and synthesize the findings in light of the existing literature and theoretical framework, and identify relevance for practice and future research (Yusuf, 2016).
In education and psychology, learning falls under three philosophical frameworks and they include Behaviorist, Cognitivist and Constructivist. However, Behaviorism is a worldview that operates on a principle of "stimulusresponse". All behavior according to this theory is caused by external stimuli (operant conditioning). Thus, the behavior can be explained without the need to consider internal mental states or consciousness. John B. Watson (1878-1958), Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936), B. F. Skinner (1904-1990, E. L. Thorndike (1874Thorndike ( -1949 and Albert Bandura (1925-present) had contributed significantly in the establishment of Behaviorist Learning Theory (David, 2015).
The Behaviourist theory assumes a learner as essentially passive, responding only to environmental stimuli. Constructivism, on the other hand, is a paradigm or worldview which posited that learning is an active, constructive process. According to this theory, the learner is an information constructor. The theory is based on the premise that the act of learning is based on a process which links new knowledge to preexisting knowledge (Dennick, 2016). Cognitive Learning is a complex form of learning. It invol-ves interpreting present perceptions in the light of past information to get way through unfamiliar problems. It is more than just gathering information. It involves new ways of learning, acting and solving problems (Ezemenaka, 2013).
This study adopted the constructivism theory of learning. With these students will be able to construct and control their own learning by making judicious use of the social media platforms which they have access to. Okafor (2016) stated that education combines all the elements by which an individual develops abilities, attitudes and other forms of behavior that help his/ her existence in the society. Thus, education assists an individual in minimizing his or her mental, emotional and physical capabilities that benefit him or her and the society at large. The theory went further to explain that humans can only process a finite amount of information in a channel at a time, and they make sense of incoming information by actively creating a mental representation.
Thus, people construct knowledge in meaningful ways when they pay attention to the relevant material, organize it into a coherent mental structure and integrate it with prior knowledge (Sorden, 2016). Onasanya (2015) pointed out the breakthrough in ICT particularly in the 21 st century and assert that the inception of new trends in educational technology facilitates the creation of various forums for educational interactions. For instance, learning may take place through different platforms of social media, internet-based tools and services that enable learners to collaborate, with one another, generate content, gather and disseminate information online. Examples of social media in education are Classroom Blogs, Wikis, Googles, Instagram, Facebook, Social Networking Sites, Twitter, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Next Vista, Teachers domain, School Tube, iTunes Store, Blossoms (Classroom Aid, 2017).
Although scholars have also explored the implications or outcomes aroused by social media usage, incongruent findings have been reached with both positive and negative effects of using social media (Ainin et al., 2015;Wohn & LaRose, 2014). Addiction to social media, availability of information without restriction to the type of information ranging from academic and non -academic one gets, ability to meet and socialize with new friends on the internet, cyber fraud and bully, low level of self -efficacy in utilizing social media, distraction away from important things are few factors that determine students' perceptions in using social media as it tends that there are positive and negative sides of these factors.
Hence, this study investigates undergraduates' proficiency level of using social media in Kwara state. The aim of this study is to investigate what social media platform are available to undergraduates for learning? How do undergraduate students utilize social media for learning? What is the level of proficiency of undergraduates on the utilization of social media for learning? How do gender influence undergraduates' utilization of social media for learning? And what is the influence of gender on undergraduates' Proficiency level on the utilization of social media for learning.

METHOD
This research was conducted in the year 2019 within July to November. This study adopted a quantitative survey method. The method describes and interprets events as they appear without any form of manipulation. It afforded the researchers an ample opportunity to collect a large volume of information on respondents' Proficiency' level of utilizing Social Media for Learning in Nigeria. The population of this study were all undergraduate students in Kwara state, Nigeria. The target population however, comprised all undergraduate students in three universities in Kwara state, Nigeria. These three universities were chosen due to the access to conduct study in their institutions. One hundred and fifty undergraduate students each were sampled across three universities. Therefore, 450 copies of questionnaire were distributed across the three universities in Kwara State.
The instrument for this study is a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire is divided into four major sections (A-D). Section A seeks demographic information on respondents' institution, gender, age. Section B seeks information on the kind of social media available to students for learning. Respondents were required to tick from the list of social media, the ones they own or have access to. The response mode for Section B was 'Yes' and 'No' . Section C found out the undergraduate students' extent of utilization of social media for learning. The response mode of Not utilized, moderately utilized and Highly utilized was used for this Section B. Section D garner information on undergraduate students' proficiency of utilization of social media for learning. The response mode is based on 4-point Likert-type rating scale of strongly Agree (SA), Agree (A), Disagree (D), and strongly Disagree (SD).
A research instrument is valid to the extent to which it measures precisely and adequately what it is designed for. Since the intended instrument for this study was adapted from previous studies, it was given to the experts for critique and three other lecturers in the Department of Educational Technology, University of Ilorin validated the instrument. Their corrections, modifications and suggestions were strictly adhered to by the researchers to ensure the relevance and suitability of the instrument for the present study. For the reliability of the instrument, the researcher administered 25 copies of the questionnaire on undergraduate students in Osun State University. Cronbach alpha reliability statistic was used to determine the instrument's reliability at 0.05 level of significance.
The result as shown recorded 0.86 on social media available to students for learning; 0.89 on undergraduate students' extent of utilization of social media for learning; and 0.86 on undergraduate students' proficiency of utilization of social media for learning. This shows that the instrument is highly reliable for the study. The researchers obtained a letter of introduction to the selected institutions for the study, and seek the permission of the authorities of the institutions to involve their students in the study. The researcher, thereafter, administer copies of the questionnaire on the respondents to complete, and retrieve them immediately. The completed copies of questionnaires were coded and duly analysed.
Ethical issues were considered in the course of this study. The purpose of the research was made known to the participants, for them to give informed consent. Participation was purely voluntary as no respondent were coerced to take part in the study, and withdrawal from participation by any of them did not attract sanction. Confidentiality and anonymity were upheld as neither the personal data of the respondents nor those of the institutions were divulged. All information supplied were used mainly for the purpose of the research, and treated with utmost confidentiality. In addition, the researchers ensured that all cited works in this study were duly acknowledged and included in the list of references to avoid plagiarism. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the analysis and interpretation of the data obtained for this study.
There are two hypotheses to speculate this research. First hypothesis is there is no significant difference between male and female undergraduates' utilization of social media for learning while the second hypothesis was that there is no significant difference between male and female undergraduates' proficiency towards the utilization of social media. Means and percentages were used to answer research questions. Hypotheses 1 and 2 were tested using t-test because they compare one variable each at two levels. All hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance.

RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The data presented provide a summary of the major characteristics of the respondents that were involved in the study. A total of 450 copies of questionnaires were distributed but 378 were retrieved and properly filled amounting to 84.0% return rate. This was thus used for the analysis.

Figure 2 Pie chart showing Respondents' Gender
As displayed in table 2, the male respondents were more than their female counterparts. This is further shown in figure 2.

A. What Social Media Platform Are Available to Undergraduates for Learning?
The social media platform that were available and accessible to undergraduates for learning are Facebook, WhatsApp, Wikis, Twitter, Blogs, Email and YouTube. Media gives an opportunity to use equipment such as computer, multimedia projector and allied resources for the presentation of idea in quite a number of ways (Olumorin, 2015). In addition, Van-Rooy (2012) posited that the ubiquity, availability and rapid growth of ICT create unique opportunities for teaching and learning in schools.

B. How Do Uundergraduate Students Utilize
Social Media for Learning?
The kind of social media platform which undergraduates utilize for learning was investigated and the results are presented in table 3. It indicated that WhatsApp, Blogs and Email were highly utilized by undergraduates utilize for learning while Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram were highly moderately by undergraduates utilize for learning. WhatsApp, Blogs and Email were highly utilized by undergraduates utilize for learning. Andresen and Brink (2013) post-training requires multiple touches through the learning experience. Mobile learning is a new form of education that integrates e-learning with mobility in the process of delivering or receiving the instructional contents (Falade & Alimi, 2015).

D. H0 1 : There Is No Significant Difference
Between Male and Female Undergraduates' Utilization of Social Media for Learning Table 5 indicates that t (376) = 0.78, p > 0.05. This means that the stated null hypothesis was not rejected. This was as a result of the tvalue of 0.78 resulting in 0.66 significance value which was greater than 0.05 alpha value. It was deduced that there was no significant difference in undergraduates' utilization of social media based in gender. There was no significant diffe-tied this view and stated that the general goals of education supported the utilization of multimedia in instructional process. Adapting platforms that are not meant for learning is not an easy task but is achievable with appropriate guidelines and planning for both teachers and students (Jamari, Mohd Zaid, Mohamed, Abdullah & Aris, 2017).

C. How Proficient Are Undergraduates on the Utilization of Social Media for Learning?
The Proficiency level of undergraduates on the utilization of social media for learning was examined and presented in table 4. The result indicated that the level of proficiency of undergraduates on the utilization of social media for learning was high. Harward (2016) asserted that extending the learning experience pre-and    Table 6 indicates that t (376) = 0.07, p = 0.95. This means that the stated null hypothesis was accepted. This was as a result of the t-value of 0.07 resulting in 0.95 significance value which was greater than 0.05 alpha value. It was deduced that there was no significant difference in undergraduates' proficiency towards the utilization of social media based on gender. There was no significant difference between male and female undergraduates' proficiency towards the utilization of social media. There are about five times more men than women among those who study computing at a tertiary level (Organisation for Economic co-operation and Development (OECD), 2015), which may be related to feelings of incompetence (low self-efficacy) by girls and women.
The study focused on the undergraduates' proficiency on the utilization of social media for learning in Nigeria. The findings of this study may therefore not be generalizable to other universities outside Nigeria. Also, the respondents comprised undergraduate students in Kwara state, thus the study may therefore not be generalizable to undergraduate students in other zones in Nigerian. The results of this study may not as well be generalized to postgraduate students in Nigerian universities. However, despite these limitations, the study achieved its aim especially in the area of proficiency of social media for learning. The findings of this study were significant, valid and useful.
For further researches in this area, the following were suggested: Effort to repeat this study in other states in Nigerian universities should be supported. Further studies should be replicated on tertiary schools' lecturers. Other construct such as extent of utilization, readiness, self-efficacy, attitude and motivation towards the use of social media could also be investigated. Also, the influence of variables such as, area of specialization, IQ and age on their proficiency in the use of social media for learning could also be researched into.

CONCLUSION
This study concluded that undergraduate Students are proficient in utilizing social media for learning and that both male and female undergraduates are proficient in the use of the available and accessible social media for learning. Based on the findings, it was therefore recommended that undergraduate students should explore other social media for learning. Lecturers in tertiary institutions should use most of the social media platforms in teaching students as this will boost their proficiency in utilizing the social media platforms for learning. Effort should be made by the government to enact laws to do proper monitoring or restrict what undergraduate students use social media for in other to decrease unproductive behavior in students via social media. Stakeholders could organize seminars for male and female' students on how to use social media to facilitate their learning in and outside the classroom environment.