social media in higher education a literature review of facebook

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Social media in higher education: A literature review of Facebook

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Social Media in Higher Education: A Literature Review and Research Directions

Social media [technology] has become a growing phenomenon with many and varied definitions in public and academic use. For our purposes, the term social media technology (SMT) refers to web-based and mobile applications that allow individuals and organizations to create, engage, and share new user-generated or existing content, in digital environments through multi-way communication. Despite the widespread use of SMT, little is known about the benefits of its use in postsecondary contexts and for specific purposes (e.g., marketing, recruitment, learning, and/or student engagement). It is critical to begin to examine if and how higher education institutions are incorporating the use of SMT. This review of existing literature on the use of SMT in higher education will provide a baseline sense of current uses nationally, providing a descriptive overview of the phenomenon.

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Social media is pervasive in all aspects of modern life, including health, education, parenting, entertainment personal relationships and current affairs. In Higher Education however, social media is becoming a site of tension between those pursuing connected and innovative educational practice on one hand and an increasingly constrained policy environment reacting to reputational damage resulting from subversive and risky online behaviour by students and staff on the other. Social media has polarised academics, many of whom dismiss it as time-wasting and trivialising academic work and others who embrace it as an open and evolving form of scholarship and academic practice. Students engage with it for learning despite the expected norms of traditional academic practice. This symposium will highlight and explore key issues dominating current debates around the use and misuse of social media in Higher Education drawing on the wisdom of the crowd to find solutions to such challenges.

International Journal of Learning and Teaching

Vanessa Camilleri

Alison Purvis , Sue Beckingham

There are many examples of social media being used in higher education to enhance learning and teaching. While some academics are confident in exploring multiple strands of social media and blend them instinctively for a multi-dimensional learning experience; others are more tentative, preferring to understand the nature of the tool or process thoroughly, often by learning from others before embarking on a social media based activity (Beckingham, Purvis and Rodger 2014). However there are a broad range of factors, experiences and perceptions that may influence an individual and their resulting use of, and expectations of, social media as a learning construct. The aim of the study was to examine current institutional practice in the use of social media in this context, to inform strategic direction and consider implications for future academic development in order to achieve a positive impact on the learning experience for students. Fifty individuals responded to an online survey. While the majority of these (n=35) were already using social media in some way in their teaching practice, and mostly had positive attitudes towards it, the remainder had not. Some were open to the idea, though naturally cautious, while others were clear that it had no place in their teaching practice. Social Media for Learning in Higher Education-Conference Proceedings 2015 2 This rich picture revealed a variety of barriers and enablers: where confidence was high and support available; uptake of social media as a tool for learning was more prevalent and more successful. There was a strong connection between support (formal and informal) and individual confidence, and a subsequent willingness to try new things to enhance learning. Recent research advocates the development of digital capabilities including the confident use of social media for communication and collaboration (Beetham 2015); and that where embedded, its use provides essential skills for future graduates. It is therefore timely to review the skill sets and development needs of staff in order to support the learning of students.

Center for Marketing Research. University of …

David Sprague

Planning For Higher Education

Lindsey Harness, PhD

MIMBAR PENDIDIKAN

Norainna Besar

ABSTRACT: The social media comprises of diverse applications with different main functions configurations and characteristics. This paper is to gain insight into the potential use of social media in the context of higher education and particularly into the teacher use of Facebook in their teaching. The literature review presented in this paper begins by synthesizing the definition and types of social media and exploring its characteristic as well as critically interrogating related studies as to how social media, particularly Facebook, is being used in order to connect learners and support teachers teaching. It can be concluded that social media comprises of diverse applications with different main functions configurations and characteristics. The most prevalent and high profile social media is SNSs (Social Network Sites), for example Facebook, that has proved its ability to assist education through numbers of studies which show its benefits in education, but then, again at the same...

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Handbook of Research on Education and Technology in a Changing Society

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Social media has, in the past decade, transformed the way students and faculty communicate in the teaching and learning process. The teaching and learning process in higher education is currently experiencing a technological revolution. This is mainly because social media is presently used as a tool by faculty and administrators to communicate with students inside and outside of the classroom. In this chapter, descriptive statistics are used to analyze secondary data on the trend of faculty use of social media by discipline, demographics, and number of years. It also analyzes the use of social media sites, barriers to the use of social media sites, as well as faculty use of social media in higher education. Results show that less than 50% of faculty use social media for instruction. Overall, younger faculty (under 35 years) report the use of SMT 55.7% more than older faculty (55 and above years). Faculty in Arts and Humanities indicate a higher use of social media than all disciplin...

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Social media use in higher education: a review.

1. Introduction

2. popular social networks and higher education, 3. social networks and learning processes, 3.1. on the side of students, 3.1.1. support, 3.1.2. enhancing educational processes, 3.1.3. academic performance, 3.1.4. communication and collaboration, 3.1.5. synopsis, 3.2. on the side of educators, 4. social networks, personality, and learning style, 5. social networks as learning management/support systems, 6. social networks and educational institutions, 7. conclusions and discussion, author contributions, acknowledgments, conflicts of interest.

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Share and Cite

Zachos, G.; Paraskevopoulou-Kollia, E.-A.; Anagnostopoulos, I. Social Media Use in Higher Education: A Review. Educ. Sci. 2018 , 8 , 194. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040194

Zachos G, Paraskevopoulou-Kollia E-A, Anagnostopoulos I. Social Media Use in Higher Education: A Review. Education Sciences . 2018; 8(4):194. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040194

Zachos, Georgios, Efrosyni-Alkisti Paraskevopoulou-Kollia, and Ioannis Anagnostopoulos. 2018. "Social Media Use in Higher Education: A Review" Education Sciences 8, no. 4: 194. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci8040194

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The academic turn: Social media in higher education

Thirusellvan vandeyar.

Department of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, Leyds Street, Pretoria, 0002 South Africa

Universities must transform to fulfil expectations of the knowledge society. At the same time academics are required to respond to the dynamic environment that information and communications technologies (ICT) bring to effective and efficient teaching methods. Utilizing a qualitative case study approach, this study set out to explore experiences of academics’ as they made a pedagogic turn towards using social media technology for teaching in a resource-constrained context. The Technology Acceptance Model served as the theoretical mooring of this study. Data capture included a mix of semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, document analysis and field notes. Findings are presented as three academic turns. First, a turn away from the institutions’ LMS due to contextual exigencies. Second, a pedagogical turn towards Web 2.0 technologies using social media tools to enhance their pedagogy. Third, a beliefs and attitude turn about the affordances of social media; augmenting academics’ resilience to persevere with this technology of choice. This study recommends that the use of social media networking in higher education creates a viable form of technology enhanced teaching, particularly in resource-constrained contexts. Further studies should explore academics emerging pedagogical practices in their use of social media, and students’ perceptions and engagement in social media learning communities.

Introduction and background context

The introduction of ICT brings forth new opportunities for academics in higher education institutions (HEI’s) to reconfigure the way they conduct their business of facilitating teaching and learning. The rapid pace of change in technology innovation and development demands that HEI’s are always in a state of flux (Kukulska-Hulme 2012 ). The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), witnessed the emergence of robot tutors and chatbots, which offers new possibilities for universities to engage with students. This dynamic transition to an ICT intensive environment creates a world of ‘complexity’ and poses overwhelming challenges for academics to reconceptualise their teaching (Mostert and Quinn 2009 , p. 72). In order to be relevant, academics must acquire additional skills and teaching methods concomitant with ICT integration such as, blended learning, hybrid learning, e-learning, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), flipped classrooms and so forth (Protsiv and Atkins 2016 ). Although HEI’s may respond to the need for ICT technical support for academics (Mostert and Quinn 2009 ), the more serious issue is that ICT integration requires academics to reconceptualise their pedagogical practice (Tess 2013 ). This means that academics require much more than the mere acquisition of various pedagogical knowledges as delineated by the Mishra and Koehler’s Technology, Pedagogy and Content Knowledge (TPACK) model (Cubeles and Riu 2018 ; Mishra and Koehler 2007 ). Furthermore, the Covid-19 pandemic has catapulted the urgency and dire need for using online tools to the forefront of its significance to continue teaching and learning activities. Nationwide closures of educational institutions are impacting over 91% of the world’s student population. The Vice-Principal of a South African university stated “We are trying our best to address the unprecedented demands of online educating while social distancing. Universities are now faced with the biggest challenge presented by the pandemic, and that is the need to move teaching and learning online immediately” (Naidu 2020 , p.1). In this regard many academics are caught on their backfoot, in not seizing the opportunities presented by social media tools for teaching online.

In the context of Uganda, a developing country, the introduction of ICT into mainstream education is intended to transform teaching and learning in higher education institutions. However, the integration of ICT is inhibited by typical developing countries exigencies namely, inadequate access to relevant technology, erratic power supply, lack of supporting policies, internet infrastructure and high cost of internet, among other contextual issues (Maleko et al. 2011 ). Though research on ICT in universities is apparent, there is a dearth of research that focuses specifically on the use of social media in the teaching-learning space (Tess 2013 ), and even less research on its influence in the higher education teaching context of developing countries (Sobaith et al. 2016 ). Accordingly, this study asks how do academics integrate ICT in their practice in a developing country? How do academics utilise social media to make a pedagogical shift? What beliefs, perceptions and attitudes do academics hold about the integration of ICT in their practice? Thus, the purpose of this study is to explore how academics’ make a pedagogical shift in their use of ICT, and to address the identified gaps in the empirical literature (Chugh and Ruhi 2018 ; Manca 2020 ).

Exploring the literature terrain

A review of the voluminous literature yielded a few themes namely, ICT trends in higher education, learning management systems (LMS) and the role of academics as instructional designers, social media in higher education, and academics’ underlying beliefs and attitudes about the use of ICT in higher education.

ICT in higher education has transformed the coalface of higher education learning and teaching. Increased internet connectivity has led to increased access to higher education learning through massive open online courses (MOOCs), virtual-classrooms, online and open universities. This pervasive access to online universities is growing unabated and traditional higher education institutions have to respond by providing lifelong learning opportunities for students to study at their convenience, regardless of place and time (Harris et al. 2009 ). The ubiquity of technology has also enabled access to education for distance students, socio-economic disadvantaged students and disabled students. Furthermore, ICT offers new ways of delivering a flexible, customised education suitable for differentiated learning environments to anyone, anywhere, and anytime. Englund et al. ( 2017 ) indicate that though ICT has made significant inroads into universities, its widespread use by academics has not yielded the requisite conceptual changes to traditional modes of teaching. This is disappointing because the envisaged potential of ICT to transform teaching in higher education is being missed or at worse resisted (Al-Senaidi et al. 2009 ). A study conducted by Davies ( 2011 ) found that there has not been much progress on academic’s integration of ICT into their teaching practice. Less than one third of faculty adequately prepared to incorporate ICT into their teaching practice. Furthermore, faculty training seemingly does not promote the integration of ICT as an integral component of curriculum delivery (Garner and Bonds-Raacke 2013 ). The extant literature (Cubeles and Riu 2018 ; Hue and Jalil 2013 ; Gaffar et al. 2011 ) suggest that the use of ICT has not effectively transformed teaching and learning in higher education institutions.

The growing use of learning management systems (LMS 1 ) in universities seems to favour basic academic skills sets and institutional ICT transformation (Johnson et al. 2016 ). Although universities have invested significant, financial and human resources, academics have used the LMS merely as a repository for subject materials and information sharing (Cabero-Almenara et al. 2019 ). Most LMS features that may promote a pedagogical shift to constructive teaching remains limited or non-existent. Saunders and Klemming ( 2016 ) argue that the transition an academic has to make from teaching in a face-to-face traditional classroom setting to a virtual online teaching environment requires ‘curriculum designer’, ‘instructional designer’ and ‘technical designer’ skill sets. However, it may be a challenge to find academics with an ICT profile that comprise these requisite designer skills, given that in some cases academics become lecturers without any pedagogy training. There seems to be a dearth of literature about academics’ engagement with learning management systems (Beer et al. 2009 ) as well as the affordances that LMS brings to academics changed pedagogical practice (Coates et al. 2005 ). The adoption of new technological approaches in teaching can be a daunting task for academics and may result in a trade-off through sacrificing a research- intensive focus for a teaching focus. Academics have to be compliant with the digital transformation ethos of higher education institutions in order to be relevant and competitive. Thus, they have to transcend the difficulties of using new technology within the time constraints and become change agents by adopting the belief that ICT has the potential to enhance student learning (Akbar 2016 ).

A current trend that is emerging in higher education is the role that social media plays in the teaching-learning context (Manca 2020 ). Recent research suggests that despite the proliferation of Web 2.0 technology, academics have not embraced the opportunity to use this technology to support their pedagogy, content delivery and assessment (Chen and Bryer 2012 ; Manca and Ranieri 2016 ). Students, on the other hand, being avid and apt users of social media favour the use of social networking, although mostly for social engagement than for educational purpose (Guy 2012 ). In contrast, evidence suggest that faculty seem to be more ‘cautious’ and less willing than students to use social media, particularly for teaching (Piotrowski 2015 , p. 3). The influence of social media on academic practice indicate that academics are ambivalent about the role that social media should play in teaching and learning. In light of this Stathopoulou, Siamagka and Christodoulides ( 2019 , p.422) indicate that faculty members have been “advised to keep a balance in terms of relevance of social media use, control, and usage level” of social media platforms. Although some studies (McAliney 2013 ; Stathopoulou et al. 2019 ) suggest that academic interest in the use of social media for instructional purposes, most research indicates that academics are averse to its use (Manca and Ranieri 2016 ; Selwyn 2012 ). In this regard, academics believe social media is a form of disruptive technology that does not promote student learning (Friesen and Lowe 2012 ), while others believe that social media blurs the boundary between personal use and academic use (Tang and Hew 2017 ; Lenhart et al. 2010 ). Academics lack of personal use of social media tools is also touted as another factor contributing to their indifference to its educational value (Guy 2012 ). Some contextual factors inhibiting academics use of social media for teaching are attributed to; time constraints, high workloads, cyber security and bullying, privacy and lack of appropriate assessment strategies.

Guy ( 2012 , p. 12) indicates that critics of social media are “calling for regulations and/or the removal of such technologies” for educative purposes. In cases where social media tools were utilised for academic purposes, this seemed to be limited to activities such as submitting assignments, or self-driven reinforcement activities (Guy 2012 ; McCarthy 2009 ). However, proponents of social media in higher education concur that its affordances can translate positively into participatory learning (Manan et al.  2012 ; Manca 2020 ; Duta and Martinez-Rivera 2015 ), self-reflection and social interaction (Deng and Yuen 2011 ), and improved student engagement and communication skills (Lederer 2012 ). The ubiquity of social media in higher education may transform teaching through collaborative learning, flexible learning environments and interactive user-centred learning (Amin and Rajadurai 2018 ). Despite these benefits of social media for learning, there are inherent concerns in higher education institutions about the use of social media in teaching and learning. First, that it is a type of disruptive technology that challenges traditional teaching approaches (Ratto and Boler 2014 ); second, that students’ perceptions about using social media tools must change to ‘this is where I study’ (Bolat and O’Sullivan 2017 , p.744); third, although social media allows for flexible distance and online learning, reducing time and space constraints of access to education, cognisance must be taken of socio-economically disadvantaged students who may be unable to access social media tools for learning (Nayar and Kumar 2018 ); and fourth, social media challenges power-relations and rigid hierarchical structure in universities (Larsson and Kalsnes 2014 ).

Research (Hue and Jalil 2013 ; Thorvaldsen and Madsen 2020 ) posit that the integration of ICT into the academics’ pedagogic practice is a complex process. Given that teaching itself is a complex process (Loughran 2013 ), technology integration should not only focus on academics’ knowledge of technology, curriculum and pedagogy (Mishra and Koehler 2007 ), but significantly also consider academics’ attitudes (Ertmer et al. 2012 ). Against the myriad of important issues to be considered in the integration of technology, research pinpoints academics’ attitudes as the single most important factor (Albirini 2006 ). Seemingly, it is not the nature of the technology, or access to technology that inhibits or promotes ICT integration, but academics’ beliefs and attitudes that are at the heart of the problem (Renes and Strange 2011 ). Tearle’s ( 2004 ) ICT integration model places subjective norms, beliefs and attitudes at the core of an academic’s intention to use ICT in practice. Teacher’s pedagogical beliefs are at work in our quest to understand successful technology integration. Ertmer’s (Ertmer et al. 2012 ) nascent work on teachers’ beliefs identified first order changes such as ICT access, ICT preparedness and curriculum freedom as issues that may be easily resolved. However, teacher beliefs about ICT use and integration is not so easy to understand and resolve. Second order ‘beliefs’ challenge academics to reconceptualise technological infused ways of “seeing and doing things”. Beliefs as second order changes are pivotal and of particular interest in this study, because it is irreversible and prevents a person reverting to previous routines of traditional teaching. According to Ertmer et al. ( 2012 ) fundamental change to use ICT in constructive ways, may only occur if academics’ inherent attitude about role of technology is concurrent with their practice. To research academic’s use of technology in teaching, we have to distil what they say (beliefs) as opposed to what they actually do (practice).

Theoretical scaffolding

Davis’ ( 1993 ) Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) underpins this study as a theoretical framework. The TAM represents a good fit within a constructivist meta-theoretical paradigm, as it presents individual attitudes and subjective choice for using (or not using) ICT for teaching and learning. Two distinct attitude constructs namely, ‘perceived usefulness’ (PU) and ‘perceived ease of use’ (PEU) are used to frame the attitude of the academic towards engagement or indifference to the use of technology. These two behavioural constructs namely PU and PEU also directly influence whether actual engagement with the technology will occur.

Davis ( 1993 ) defines perceived usefulness as the extent to which an academic perceives that their use of the technology would facilitate or enhance their work performance, the emphasis of perceived usefulness (PU) is on improved job productivity and effectiveness. Davis identifies the construct of perceived usefulness as the affordances that ICT brings to teaching; First, would the use of technology result in accomplishing the task more quickly? Second, would it improve or enhance their job effectiveness? Third, would the end user of the technology find the task easier to perform? Fourth, and most significantly, would the end user find it useful?

The second construct of the Technology Acceptance Model namely, perceived ease of use is described as the degree to which the user may appreciate that the use of technology would be both mentally and physically effortless. The emphasis of the PEU construct is on the amount of effort the academic will have to exert to use the technology innovation. Davis ( 1993 ) describes perceived ease of use as being easy to interact with, understandable and flexible to use. Ease of use also implies that the academic must develop a skill set or competence in the use of social media technology (Dumpit and Fernandez 2017 ). Although environmental context, type of technology, and institutional mandates should be considered as additional criteria in research on the TAM model. Rodriguez ( 2012 ) argues that attitude is the key construct that determines the user’s assessment of how the target system would benefit job performance.

Research strategy

A social-constructivist researcher lens that views knowledge as being socially constructed by individuals to make meaning of their experiences was used as the meta-theoretical paradigm to frame this study. The case is bounded by its particularity to academics at a public university in Uganda. This qualitative instrumental case study (Stake 2005 ) attempts to provide insight into the “little understood” phenomenon of social media use by academics. The study was exploratory and thus may or may not be typical of other cases, as focus was on the peculiarity of the case and not intended to draw generalisation of the findings.

Data collection methods included semi-structured face-to-face interviews as the main data collection method (Denzin and Lincoln 2011 ). Classroom observations of academics’ practices were conducted with the researcher as a reactive observer. Both classroom observations and document analysis addressed triangulation of data, to verify what participants say they do may not necessarily be what they actually do in practice (Argyris and Schön 1974 ). The participant interviews and class observations took place over a period of ten months (2018–2019) and continued until saturation of data occurred. Member-checking (Creswell 2012 ) allowed for the researcher to revisit participants to clarify issues captured in transcripts to “check for accuracy” and interpretation. The unit of analysis was represented by the purposeful selection of one academic from each of the seven faculties at Lethlolo University (Table ​ (Table1 1 ).

Demographics of participants

Most garnered data were converted into text, which was the primary source of manual coding and interpretation through content analysis. Through the iterative, reflective and interactive content analysis process, priori themes emerged (Saldana 2012 ). The coding and analysis process were further subjected to distillation to enhance coherent themes. Five themes emerged from the coding of data namely; existing pedagogical practices, pedagogical paradigm shift, ICT as a catalyst for professional development, perceived challenges and opportunities in the use of social media. The table below is a representative sample of the two themes and the sub-categories relevant to this paper (see Table ​ Table2 2 ).

Some emergent themes

While this study has provided some positive insights, it is not without limitations. The participant sample could have been selected from a larger and more representative academic population from other universities located in Uganda that would render the findings to be objective. Inter-rater reliability could have been employed to enhance content analysis rigour in the coding and theme coherency.

The themes are represented as academic ‘turns’ to portray the transition made by academics to integrate ICT into their teaching practice. The first ‘turn’ identifies academics’ abandonment of the institutional learning management system. A second ‘turn’ illustrates the technology shift they made to using social media platforms to enhance their teaching and evolve their own pedagogical approach. The third ‘turn’ represents the resilience experienced by academics to pursue the integration of social media in their practice.

The ‘turn’ away from an LMS

This theme unfolds to describe academics’ ambivalence towards the Moodle learning management system. First I describe the ‘pull factors’ of the affordances that the LMS brings to academics’ work. Second, I describe the ‘push factors’ experiences that caused academics to ‘turn’ away from the institutions LMS.

Participants in this study believed that the LMS offered advantages to simplify most of their administrative tasks in ways that would make teaching and learning more streamlined, systematised and organised. These academics used the university’s LMS to change the way they facilitated their classes. Participants in this study began by adopting the LMS for administrative task-related to dissemination of course materials with limited use for enhancing learning. The perceived usefulness of the LMS to facilitating teaching in an online environment seemed to have caught the attention of academics (Revythi and Tselios 2019 ). Academics viewed the LMS as a tool that supports innovative administrative approaches to the delivery of course materials for teaching and learning.

Academics argued that the LMS was key in facilitating discussions and communication in the teaching process. The perceived ease of use was that the LMS was a comprehensive platform in which they could interact and share information with students. The LMS offered them much administrative control in the manner in which they could deliver the course content,

And one of the most significant things is that the academic has control over student material and the direction of the discussion. When students are submitting assignments, they do so online [LMS] and then when I want to give submission deadlines, the incorporation of ICT is to limit the time available so that when the deadline comes the system automatically rejects further submissions (Madula).

The Moodle LMS tool was a platform for the management and administration of e-learning. Academics could upload subject material and enroll students to their courses that promoted communication and interaction between the lecturers and students. An academic indicated that the LMS platform was useful in managing coursework assignments, but also realised that the LMS was a useful tool to support and supplement the teaching process (Fig.  1 ).

I use it to send and receive communications, comments between me and the students… on some occasions, I use it as an avenue to discuss with my students’ pertinent issues and in other cases, I want to check on their involvement in the course on the LMS (Makaila).

Screen capture of e-learning platform (LMS): business management

Some academics appreciated the LMS because they did not have to travel from one campus to another. The LMS provided an opportunity to teach from a distance, yet in a collaborative way, I do not incur costs moving from one campus to another because I can conduct my lectures online via the LMS (Tuba).

Although the use of the LMS was relatively new to academics, some believed that the online system enhanced new pedagogical approaches. Academics describe how the LMS has tools that allows for embedding of multimedia content to enrich their teaching,

I can also use various media like integrating audio and visual to deliver my lectures through the LMS, which makes students understand faster and saves me time...It is possible for me to do presentations, have separate chats during presentation, and have audio … all on the LMS (Muso).

All academics shared the view that the LMS was used primarily for routine function that saved time in the delivery of course material and administration of the course. They indicated that this platform played a major role in saving valuable time to engage in other productive activities. Academics alluded to the fact that the asynchronous scheduling of classes was convenient for both lecturer and students. They found that the use of the LMS saved time, that would have been wasted through setting up face-to-face class meetings,

It is convenient for me and the students and that means less face-to-face interaction with students as this can be arranged through the LMS, it is possible to schedule class discussions … and this saves you the time wasted doing “leg work” when trying to set up or agree on an appropriate meeting time … so it’s a good thing (Muso).

Although many of the academics were enchanted with the administrative advantages that the LMS offered in facilitating their teaching, they seemed to hold higher expectations of the LMS. Within the context of this study, the findings suggest that academics had higher expectations of the LMS. First, academics had reservations about the usefulness of the LMS to change their teaching pedagogy. Second, they experienced the LMS as a work intensive system, that was a burden, and a waste of time and effort. Third, they experienced the LMS as unreliable and not user friendly. And fourth, it was fraught with student apathy.

Academics were disillusioned with the affordances that the LMS offered to enhance their teaching practice. Though they did not use all the different features and tools of the LMS, they felt that it offered little opportunity to change his pedagogical practice. It only enables more interactions with the students prior to and after their classes… other than communication, the LMS has made no significant effect to the course… as for the teaching process, I don’t see much of a difference (Kyati).

Some academics experienced the LMS as a burdening system. They complained that it took longer to accomplish tasks that were intended to be easy. The introduction of the LMS into their teaching practice seem to make their entire teaching process more complicated and seemingly increased their workload. Furthermore, the LMS required more time and effort to prepare and engage with students in online discussion activities, thus discouraging them from using it consistently. Academics seemed to suggest that the LMS required much time and effort and would incur other important academic trade-offs,

Yes, I encourage my students to engage in these discussions. However, it is challenging since it requires that I spare some time to be available for the discussion with the students, it means I have to scale down on the other activities like research supervision.

…Time is usually the biggest challenge I would think, there is too much administrative work that is not about to go away any time soon and all this eats up on my research time (Muso).

The Moodle system’s stability and reliability were a major concern for the academics in this study Academics were frustrated with the operational aspects of the LMS. The system was often inaccessibility due to the system malfunctioning or under development. Some academics were apprehensive that the technology would not be functional at the most crucial time of need. Others, indicated that logging onto the LMS platform required patience, often resulting in failed attempts,

It [LMS] is on and off. Sometimes you are not sure if it [LMS] is working and therefore students will use it as an excuse for not completing their online assignments. The LMS in place is not user friendly. Many times I am motivated by something that is friendlier, convenient and reliable than something that is complicated and unreliable …but I hardly use it any longer for the reason that it failed to work the time I wanted to use it, I am stuck to just dealing with my students face-to-face (Kaelo).

In order to login into the LMS, users need to be very patient since it takes a long time .... the time spent when logging into the system is too much and this discourages many would-be users (Aloket).

Academics felt that the main disadvantage of the LMS was student apathy. Students invariably only participated in discussions, if it was mandatory and commensurate with a grade being awarded for participation. Academics also found that students did not view the LMS as an extension of class, thus they did not see it as an alternative means to participating in online discussions. A major issue for academics was that students did not want to embrace the LMS technology and refrained from LMS mediated discussions.

They [students] are reluctant…hardly post anything to the platform … only when a course work score is attached do we get to see some tangible input, reason being that if they don’t participate then it is likely that they will get a poor grade, or worse, fail … however, when the choice is theirs to make without any form of compelling, they will not make any effort (Muso).

Students do not participate that much … and this provided a bad experience for me … so I hardly think about using it [LMS] on a regular basis (Kaelo).

Thus, the discontentment experienced by academics led to their ‘turn’ away from the learning management system and a re-‘turn’ to traditional teaching practices.

The ‘turn’ towards social media

Academics voices suggested that social media technologies presented a more effective way of using information and communication technology to enhance their practice. A number of reasons were attributed to the academic turn towards social media. First, academics claimed that social media transformed their teaching because it was effective, promoted interactions and ideally suited to teaching smaller classes. Second, social media promoted learning through inherent advantages in that it was easy to use, it could synchronously deliver course content, promote online discussions, and facilitate student engagement remotely. Third, social media was free, user-friendly interface and technical setup, and ease of connectivity motivated academics as well as students to adopt it as a teaching-learning platform. Fourth, participants seemed to prefer this mode of synchronous transmission because they received instantaneous feedback from students. Significantly, the ubiquity of social media allowed for teaching to take place almost independent of space and time constraints.

Academics relished social media as a teaching technology tool of choice. They felt that it enhanced their teaching practice. Furthermore, teaching through a social media context varied significantly from the traditional constraints of the classroom environment. Academics noted that students were not keen to ask questions during face-to-face classroom interactions, but in the online environment, discussions flourished. They felt that the adoption of social media emergent technologies catered for a twenty-first century learner. This method of teaching encouraged students to engage with the subject content, and at the same time afforded academics the opportunity to discern whether students understood or required additional support.

I just tell student to use Google and find this subject or go to Facebook and look at this page and tell me A, B, C, D. Students are more interested in completing an assignment on Facebook or the internet and are more prepared to do it than sit in the library and flip pages …. yah (Kaelo).

Academics’ were comfortable with the transition to social media as a means to changing their teaching practice. They believed that the proliferation of networking technologies and software tools presented new opportunities for academics to make use of streaming digital video in their teaching practices. The Facebook Live features were easy and more convenient to use to communicate. Initially, academics were reluctant to make use of this technology because they were uncertain of how it would work in a teaching context and whether their students would embrace this technology as a new form of course delivery.

I was quite nervous the first time I tried it. I had agreed with the class [students] on the time I would go live on Facebook and surprisingly 20 students out of a class of 43 were logged-in when I started streaming… ohhh my God! I shouted to myself, it works! It works! From reactions in the form of comments that were scrolling over the screen, I could sense the excitement from my students as well. It was a new experience for many of my students, even for me (Makaila).

Many academics also found students responded more positively to the use of social media for learning purposes. The social media online context presented a user-friendly environment for both lecturer and student. For example, the social media platform of Facebook encouraged student engagement, inquiry and interest. Students were appreciative of this form of synchronous learning and requested an academic to try the Facebook Live feature for his classes. This new approach to teaching slowly became part of this academic’s teaching repertoire,

In one of our face-to-face class interactions one of the students asked, “Why don’t we use Facebook Live for some of our discussions?” I enquired from students as to how many of them would be able to join the conversation, if we agreed on the session time. The numbers that responded positively overwhelmed me. I tried it out (Aloket).

Student responses to academics’ use of Facebook Live social media were encouraging. In the online mode of teaching (Fig. ​ (Fig.2) 2 ) students responded with “ thumbs-up ” or the “ heart ” emoticons, or short comments such as “ you answered my question in this episode ”, “ what a nice idea ” and “ thanks for the self-audit lesson .” Furthermore, In the contact lectures that followed live stream sessions, students expressed their appreciation to lecturers. Academics believe that Facebook Live was a convenient medium to engage with students because it occurred in a more relaxed environment, away from the structured classroom setting. Academics also found that in the Facebook Live streaming sessions, the majority of the students remained for the full duration of the lecture.

Screenshot from Aloket’s Facebook Live session -

Some academics also adopted blogs as an endeavour to enhance their teaching. The use of blogs as a social media technology catered for content delivery, collaborative learning, shared experiences and resources. Academics indicated that the asynchronous nature of blogs provides a changed teaching practice. In using blogs, their posting of comments presented an ideal supportive tool to promote critical thinking (Fig.  3 ). Some academics at Lethlolo University preferred the use of blogs to encourage students to work collaboratively on particular assignments or projects,

I enjoy blogging and have learned much. It is a kind of friendly way to provide feedback because you can always check on the progress of the assignments as students exchange ideas or upload results of class projects. You can always provide guidance in case you notice that the conversations are going off course …. I like them …. You know… knowledge is built through collaborative processes (Madula).

Screenshot of Madula’s blog page used a an elearning platform

Academics’ blogs were used by students to upload and edit their assignments and complete peer reviews. Blogs presented a seamless communication process, as compared to the frustration of back-and-forth emailing, the LMS, or other traditional ways to collaborate on projects. Academics acknowledged that blogs created a conducive online environment very different to the formal and restrictive classroom environment, or the constraints of the LMS.

I am cautious when I use social media like blogs or Facebook, I am not the “tough/strict” academic they know in the physical world, I adopt an entirely social face. There other channels [like LMS] that are absolutely professional (Aloket).

Beliefs and attitude ‘turn’

Academics realised that teaching in the social media online environment required a change in their beliefs and attitudes. The transition presented new and very different experiences compared to teaching in a face-to-face contact environment. Most academics concurred that changing one’s beliefs and attitudes is a catalyst for integration of ICT in teaching;

It has been a significant attitude change for me, with time I have realised that when you incorporate technology, life becomes easy, teaching becomes easy, I tried to explore this online teaching (Muso).

So we need to work on the attitude and the perception, most people have the laptops, there is internet, the students are willing… but I think it’s about changing the attitude, encouraging them (academics), telling them the benefits to themselves but also in the learning process (Kaelo).

They (other academics) have always said that some of these courses cannot be taught using ICT, but to me, I think it’s an issue of attitude. So, first of all, it is to correct their attitude and appreciate and embrace ICT… to know that ICT is a powerful tool in teaching and learning (Makaila).

Yah, definitely, it’s an attitude challenge, I think. Ahhhh, that mindset has to be changed such that you are aware that you cannot do without ICT and that it has to be part and parcel of what you do, once people get that, then definitely it won’t be hard (Tuba).

Discussion of findings

Contrary to international trends that suggest that there is a significant shift by academics to use LMS as a teaching-learning technology tool of choice (Walker et al. 2016 ), the LMS in this study did not present an opportunity for lecturers to change their pedagogy or meaningfully engage with students. The literature suggests that academics perceived the LMS to be useful to enhancing their teaching productivity and effectiveness (Venter et al. 2012 ). However, in this study academics experienced the LMS to only be useful in enhancing their administrative productivity and effectiveness. Why is this the case? Perhaps the reason for this could have been that unlike their counterparts in first world countries, LMS in this context played out in a resource-constrained environment that was fraught with power failures, lack of network connectivity, frequent downtime and student apathy. Students did not experience the system as appealing and there was a general sense of apathy and resistance to its use. Despite the apparent benefits of the underlying LMS technology as evident in the literature, the core TAM construct of its perceived usefulness did not appeal to academics in this study. Could it also be that academics were not trained to use the system and experienced its ‘ease of use’ (Davis 1993 ) as daunting? Clearly, this was an unreliable system that frustrated academics and offered little ‘usefulness’ for pedagogic change, which contributed to a ‘turn away’ from the LMS.

The second academic ‘turn’ was to towards the use of social media tools, which presented an innovative pedagogical approach for curriculum delivery and engagement with students. This change in practice is contrary to the extant literature on the integration of ICT in higher education. Manca and Ranieri ( 2016 ) found that social networking tools are among the least used technologies for teaching and learning in that they are pedagogically undervalued and under-exploited. Prescott ( 2014 ) and Shelton ( 2013 ) cite a number of reasons namely; academics do not view these technologies as having an impact on their pedagogy and lack the confidence to use these tools in practice. Selwyn ( 2012 ) found that academics in higher education institutions view social media as a disruptive tool in formal structured teaching approaches. In this study however, academics embraced the benefits of social media networking, such as live streaming and blogs, as a new approach to teaching and learning. What could account for this anomaly? Perhaps the LMS in developed countries is more stable, reliable, user-friendly and operates seamlessly, such that there is no need for academics to explore other technology avenues. However, it would seem the resource constrained environment of the Ugandan higher education, motivated academics to explore and dabble with other technology tools that were more readily accessible to students, thus they turn towards the use of social media. Academics tended to first explore with technology becoming familiar with its ‘ease of use’, and then found pedagogical purpose or ‘perceived usefulness’ (Davis 1993 ). In the context of this study, academics’ ‘turn’ towards social media technology seemed to satisfy both TAM constructs of ‘ease of use’ and ‘perceived usefulness’ (Davis 1993 ).

The third ‘turn’ is the changing beliefs and attitude of academics. Teaching in an online social media environment was new to academics as they explored unfamiliar and untested teaching strategies. It seems as though their personal beliefs informed their practice (Selwyn 2012 ). Academics explored with new approaches to teaching in an online social networking environment so as to scaffold learning, provide timeous feedback, promote collaboration, and engage with students beyond the confines of their classrooms. Academics’ beliefs and attitudes also changed with their practice as they experienced ‘ease of use’ and appreciated the ‘perceived usefulness’ of social media to teaching (Davis 1993 ; Ertmer et al. 2012 ). This was contrary to the view that social media is a form of disruptive technology (Selwyn 2012 ). Academics experiences in this study were different, they found that social media enhanced their pedagogical practice and promoted student engagement.

This study found that regardless of the resource-constrained context and pedagogical challenges experienced by academics, their change in attitude demonstrated resilience and determination to embrace ICT in their teaching practice.

Social media tools stimulated a pedagogical turn of academics. The ‘perceived usefulness’ and ‘perceived ease of use’ of social media underpinned by academics’ beliefs and resilience promoted technology agency and a pedagogical turn. Academics created a social media teaching-learning environment that was aligned to their pedagogical stance, which served to enhance collaborative learning and student-centeredness. Their rationale for making this pedagogic ‘turn’ was mainly influenced by limitations academics experienced in a resource- constrained context. Academics used the inherent limitations of a technology-constrained environment as a catalyst to creatively engage with emerging social media technologies to change their pedagogical practice.

Emerging social media technologies provided opportunities for academics that were motivated and passionate, to explore with technology to create innovative ways to teach. This study challenges the notion of academics being bricoleurs, ‘making do’ with what is at hand (Freathy et al. 2017 ) and claims that academics are resourceful practitioners, seeking inventive ways to teach more effectively. Social media tools avails academics with particular affordances in the form of flexibility, collaboration, and communication to enhance their pedagogical practice to cater for the twenty-first century learner. Teaching through social media tools not only brings forth new learning opportunities but also new pedagogical challenges. Perceptions that academics held about technology and its perceived usefulness to promote teaching and learning influenced their resilience to persevere with technology. Academics thus ‘turned’ their pedagogy to ‘fit’ and online teaching environment. The turn was threefold, a turn away from the institutional LMS, a beliefs and attitude turn, and a pedagogical turn.

Further research should explore academics emerging pedagogical practices in their use of social media, eliciting models of innovative good practice. Universities should promote the use of social media as a form of teaching, accompanied by appropriate policy resources and practical guidelines. Recommendation for practice encourages academics to explore and embrace social media tools, not as an ‘add-on’ technology, but as a structured approach to effective teaching easing pedagogical transition to using Web 2.0 technologies.

1 Learning management systems (LMS) are online tools servicing mostly higher education institutions with various teaching-learning functionalities namely, knowledge sharing, content management, discussion boards, learners’ interaction, communication and assessment. (Cabero-Almenara et al. 2019 )

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Social Media Used in Higher Education: A Literature Review of Theoretical Models

• W. Al-rahmi , Norma Alias , Mohd Shahizan
• Published 18 October 2016
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A systematic review of social media as a teaching and learning tool in higher education: A theoretical grounding perspective

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• Eva Perez   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4476-899X 1 ,
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The use of social media in higher education has been demonstrated in a number of studies to be an attractive and contemporary method of teaching and learning. However, further research and investigation are required in order to align social media's pedagogical benefits with the theoretical perspectives that inform educational practices. It is the objective of this study to provide a systematic literature review using bibliometric analysis techniques and content analysis to provide a map of research produced between 2009 and 2021. This study aims to identify theoretical frameworks, current research trends, and patterns in this field. A total of 772 publications were analysed using bibliometric methodology, while a subset of 55 publications were analysed using content analysis. As indicated by the results, there is still a growing interest in this area of research, with recent studies still focusing on attitudes towards the use of social media in teaching and learning. According to the content analysis, technology acceptance theories and learning theories are the most commonly used reference theories. This field has yet to elaborate on pedagogical theory, and there is a tendency to rely primarily on technology acceptance models rather than pedagogical models. A discussion of future practice and research implications is also provided.

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1 Introduction

The popularity of social media, among students, has increased dramatically in recent years because of technological advances in Web 2.0 tools (Eid & Al-Jabri, 2016 ; Tess, 2013 ). Indeed, social media has attracted over three billion active users across the globe (Statista, 2022 ). Such technologies have demonstrated their potential for learning and teaching due to its functions for document exchange, virtual communication and knowledge information (Hosen et al., 2021 ; Manca & Ranieri, 2017 ). Social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), and online games have been widely used for information gathering and dissemination, collaborative learning, and online social and professional connections (Cao et al., 2013 ). Most recently, Manca’s ( 2020 ) review of Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and WhatsApp revealed that the two most common activities used for learning by students were content development and discussion for peer learning/assessment. The potential use of social media for teaching and learning activities has received an increased amount of interest and attention from the scholarly community (Barrot, 2021a ). A number of studies have presented evidence regarding the use of social media by academics for personal, professional, and teaching purposes (Johnson & Veletsianos, 2021 ; Manca & Ranieri, 2016a , 2016b ). In terms of specific social media platforms, some researchers have found that Facebook groups are an effective tool to support learning, affording benefits not offered by traditional online Learning Management Systems (LMS) (Barrot, 2018 ; Chugh & Ruhi, 2018 ; Hew, 2011 ; Niu, 2019 ). Similarly, Tang and Hew ( 2017 ) noted the potential of promoting positive learning using Twitter to access and create digital content and collaboration between learners. Recently, studies have extended towards the utility of social media platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, and Snapchat. Manca ( 2020 ) notes that whilst these platforms have been gaining considerable attention among young people, they have been largely overlooked in the scholarly literature.

Social media, however, has also been shown to challenge traditional beliefs about education and pedagogy in schools and universities. According to some scholars (Manca & Ranieri, 2017 ), educators should pay particular attention to the following themes, primarily communication between students and teachers and professional conduct, as well as the integration of social networking practices into academic and teaching practices from a technological and educational perspective. Besides, other challenges included cultural and social factors that resulted in the erosion of teachers' traditional roles, the management of relationships with students, and privacy threats. Other factors included psychological resistance, traditional visions of instruction, a lack of technical support, perceived risks, institutional issues, pedagogical views, pragmatic reasons, and values.

Despite the increasing level of interest and the growing body of empirical research on specific uses of social media (Alshalawi, 2022 ; Manca & Ranieri, 2016c ; Sobaih et al., 2016 ), very few studies have been conducted to systematically examine how academics are utilizing social media within their teaching engagements and have mapped the use of social media in education across the various disciplinary fields (Barrot, 2021a ; Rehm et al., 2019 ).

Although social media use in higher education has become relatively common (Barrot, 2021a ), there is still much to be researched in order to develop a better understanding of its use as a teaching and learning tool (Sutherland et al., 2020 ). In fact, research has demonstrated that evidence-based pedagogical approaches informed by relevant empirical research are weak (Chugh et al., 2021 ). Thus, there is a necessity for further empirical work, grounded in teaching, learning, and educational technology theories, that can advance this growing field of education (Valtonen et al., 2022 ). The challenge for the development of a pedagogy for social media integration is to encourage robust and theoretically driven research that can explore the application of established learning theories and the facilitation of social media in teaching and learning (Churcher et al., 2014 ). Our belief is that focusing on the need for theoretical integration can help mitigate some of the shortcomings associated with the challenges described above.

The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the use of social media for teaching and learning purposes in higher education (2009–2021) utilizing bibliometric methods and content analysis. A primary objective of the study is to assess the degree of theoretical soundness of the studies published to date and to map the current state of the art in regard to the use of social media in teaching and learning.

This study focuses on two aspects of value: on the one hand, it examines the theoretical robustness of studies regarding teaching and learning processes based on the use of social media in higher education that have been published to date; on the other hand, it employs a mixed-method approach combining bibliometric analysis with qualitative analysis to examine the teaching and learning processes. It is our understanding that this is the first study that attempts to accomplish these objectives.

2 Theoretical background

2.1 learning benefits of social media in higher education.

Various studies have demonstrated the use of social media as a supportive and interactive tool for learning in higher education (Everson et al., 2013 ; Greenhow & Galvin, 2020 ; Manca, 2020 ; Manca & Ranieri, 2013 ). Some studies have focused on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (Everson et al., 2013 ) or Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, and WhatsApp (Manca, 2020 ). The benefits of using social media in higher education has been shown to promote student-centred pedagogies (Camas Garrido et al, 2021 ). For example, the most commonly reported positive effect of Facebook is its capacity as a learning tool for enhanced communication, collaboration, and sharing of information (Niu, 2019 ). Indeed, Facebook groups are the most reliable feature to conduct learning activities (Manca & Ranieri, 2016c ), whereas Twitter has most commonly been used for communication and assessment purposes (Tang & Hew, 2017 ). In general, the use of social media has a positive impact on student learning. However, this is not necessarily attributed to the technologies per se, but to how the technologies are used, and how certain pedagogy and/or instructional strategy is developed (Hew & Cheung, 2013 ). As argued by Greenhow et al. ( 2019 ), educators should show clarity in studying evidence-based pedagogical approaches to teaching.

Some researchers (e.g., Churcher et al., 2014 ) have reported upon how the application of learning theories can facilitate social media integration in order to create virtual communities of practice and generate positive learning outcomes. The main focus of social constructivist learning theories is on learning as a process of active discovery and the construction of knowledge in a social and cultural context (Aubrey & Riley, 2016 ). In this line, social media support social constructivism theory (Dron & Anderson, 2014 ) as it is perceived by educators to provide direction for social constructivist teaching styles (Rambe & Nel, 2015 ). In addition, the connectivist approach views learning as a network phenomenon influenced by technology and socialization (Siemens, 2006 ), as learners are encouraged to engage in peer-to-peer dialogue, sharing resources and promote communication skills (Siemens & Weller, 2011 ). From this perspective, social media can provide a platform for mixing learning and social activities (Manca, 2020 ).

In general, while students at all levels seem to harbour positive views on academic uses and applications of social media, educators appear to be somewhat more cautious than students (Piotrowski, 2015 ). Academics are most likely to use social media for research and career development than to support learning and teaching activities (Chugh et al., 2021 ; Manca & Ranieri, 2016b ). This is likely due to the fact that it can be difficult for educators to maintain best practice of pedagogy while continuously learning how to incorporate emerging technologies (Churcher et al., 2014 ). Existing research on the use of social media in higher education has been mostly about the effectiveness of social media as a teaching and learning tool (Manca & Ranieri, 2013 , 2016b ; Tess, 2013 ), but there has been a lack of empirical data (Mnkandla & Minnaar, 2017 ) and support from theory (Al-Qaysi et al., 2020 ).

Ngai et al. ( 2015 ) argue that the development of a theoretical framework for work in this area can be supported by a combination of both technology and educational theories. Al-Qaysi et al. ( 2020 ) found that whereas the Uses and Gratification Theory (UGT: Katz, 1959 ) and the social constructivism theory (Wertsch, 1985 ) are the most widely used educational theories in social media, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM: Davis, 1989 ) and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT: Venkatesh & Davis, 2000 ) are the most extensively used technology theories in studying social media adoption in education.

Indeed, there is a lack of theoretically based research that could lead to a coherent set of practices regarding the use of social media use in higher education. This shortcoming of theoretical development in pedagogical approaches to the use of social media in higher education has important implications also for social media literacies. Manca et al. ( 2021 ) remind us that educators who do not integrate learning theory into their teaching practices run the risk of having a superficial understanding of the construction and development of meaning in favour of centring technology.

This review of the literature purposely focuses upon research that is theoretically grounded and examines the most recurrent models and theories adopted to support pedagogical use of social media in higher education.

2.2 Systematic reviews on social media in education

The increasing number of systematic reviews related to the use of social media in education highlights the importance of these reviews in shaping educational research, identifying future research directions, and bridging the research-practice divide (Chong et al., 2022 ). Scholars have adopted several approaches to systematic reviews of scientific literature: (1) qualitative synthesis (e.g., Manca, 2020 ; Niu, 2019 ); (ii) meta-analysis (also known as quantitative synthesis) (e.g., Al-Qaysi et al., 2020 ; Mnkandla & Minnaar, 2017 ); (iii) qualitative and quantitative synthesis (e.g., Greenhow & Askari, 2017 ; Manca & Ranieri, 2013 , 2016b ; Manca et al., 2021 ; Tang & Hew, 2017 ); (iv) bibliometric analysis (e.g., Barrot, 2021a ; Lopes et al., 2017 ; Rehm et al., 2019 ); and most recently (v) mixed methods approach using bibliometric analysis and qualitative analysis (e.g., Barrot, 2021b ).

Most recent systematic reviews have utilised bibliometrics—a quantitative analysis of the bibliographic characteristics of a growing body of literature (Lopes et al., 2017 ). Although there has been an increase in the use of this approach across various academic fields, the method is relatively new to educational research (Arici et al, 2019 ; Chen, Zhou & Xie, 2020 ; Gumus et al., 2018 ; Song et al, 2019 ). In the area of our interest, there has been a paucity of research that has used the bibliographic method, even in conjunction with more traditional approaches, such as qualitative ones.

In their bibliometric analyses, Lopes et al. ( 2017 ) explored the use of Facebook in educational research, used Web of Science as the database to generate 260 articles from multiples levels of screening. The study found that most articles focused on social media, student’s learning, and case study research designs. It validated the versatility of Facebook as a platform for teaching and learning across different countries and disciples, however it did not study theories or models that can best examine Facebook acceptance.

In their bibliometric analysis, Rehm and colleagues ( 2019 ) focused on multiple social media platforms. Their findings showed that five out of the top 20 cited papers across all journals on instructional design and technology scholarship between 2007 and 2017 were on social media, indicating the growing interest in this topic within educational research.

Barrot ( 2021a ) examined the scientific literature related to the use of social media for education. They found that, out of the 15 examined social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube attracted the greatest attention. The data also revealed that studies on Facebook (9 out of 10) stand out in terms of citation. These findings suggest a growing interest in the use of Facebook for educational purposes. The authors suggested two possible reasons for this. Firstly, as the number of social media platforms and active users increases, so too does the number of research projects that explore their pedagogical use. Secondly, the more sophisticated the platform, the more likely it is to be used for teaching and learning.

From this review, it can be seen that only a few studies so far have mapped the scientific literature of social media in higher education using a mixed method approach – more precisely, content and bibliometric analyses. To complement and extend these earlier reviews, the current systematic review mapped the scientific literature of social media as a teaching and learning tool, giving a wider coverage to determine which theoretical frameworks can best examine the acceptance and pedagogical use of social media in higher education. Thus, the current study was undertaken to understand the landscape of scholarly work in social media as a teaching and learning tool in higher education, particularly its growth, geographical and publication distribution, speech patterns, referring to most commonly used terms or dominant terms, regarding the evolution of the term “social media”, and the analysis of theories / models that are used to examine social media acceptance and adoption in higher education.

3 Rationale and research question

In this study, social media is examined from a theoretical perspective, with a focus on studies which have used theory to help explain social media integration as a teaching and learning tool in higher education. A body of literature has developed recently that links theory with the use of social media in terms of pedagogical best practice. For example, the TAM model (Davis, 1989 ) was utilised to examine the educational outcomes of social media use in teaching (Cao et al., 2013 ), whereas social constructivism theory was used to investigate the potential of Facebook and wikis as collaborative learning tools (Churcher et al., 2014 ). Advancing previous traditional and single method approaches to reviewing literatures, this study advances a mixed-methods approach to explore connections among research articles published between 2009 and 2021. Specifically, this study addresses the following research questions:

What are the main characteristics of the scientific literature in terms of (a) year of publication, (b) publication outlets, (c) leading countries, and (d) affiliations and core authors?

What are the most frequent speech patterns and research trends within the studies?

What theoretical frameworks / models were employed in the studies to guide social media integration in education? And, which study aims are most commonly aligned with such frameworks / models?

A mixed methods approach combining quantitative (bibliometric analysis) and qualitative (content analysis) methods was used to develop a complementary picture of the research area in terms of context for trends (Plano Clark, 2010 ) and to triangulate findings in order that they may be mutually corroborated (Bryman, 2006 ). Qualitative content analysis is useful for “... the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005 ; p 1278). Bibliometric analysis is a rigorous, systematic, and innovative method for analysing publication productions and research trends (de Oliveira et al., 2019 ; Erfanmanesh & Abrizah, 2018 ). It enables the identification of relationships among different aspects of the scientific literature through the analysis of publications and documents according to specific characteristics, such as authors, journals, institutions and countries (Esen et al., 2020 ).

The analysed studies were sourced from ERIC and Web of Science and those published from 2009 to June 2021 were included. 2009 was the first recorded fit for the criteria of concern to this study, which is in line with recent studies that have highlighted that social media started to gain attention in 2010 (Valtonen et al., 2022 ). The Web of Science (WoS) was used as a search database in this study since it is the most important bibliometric database (Pranckutė, 2021 ), whereas ERIC on EBSCO databases was used as a subject specific database in education research (ERIC,  https://eric.ed.gov/?faq ).

To increase the accuracy of the current analysis, books, book chapters, and book reviews were excluded, with a focus on peer-reviewed articles, proceedings papers, and literature reviews (Leong et al., 2021 ).

The two databases were searched using the following search string:

(TS = (("social media" OR "social networking site*" OR facebook OR twitter OR Instagram)) AND TS = (("higher education" OR "third level" OR universit* OR college OR academic*)) AND TS = ((teaching OR learning OR "educational tool*"))) AND ((LA == ("ENGLISH")) NOT (DT == ("BOOK" OR "BOOK REVIEW" OR "BOOK CHAPTER"))

This study methodology is based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009 ). PRISMA supports a transparent approach for systematic reviews and ensures a replicable procedure (e.g., review protocol, search strategy, article selection criteria). When considering the criteria for inclusion and exclusion of literature the emphasis was upon studies assessing the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool and not, for instance, as a marketing / communication too. In addition, studies focused on English as a second language were excluded as these are often seen as courses that provide support to leaners, rather than leading to a defined exit award per se. Table 1 presents the screening criteria.

The first screening of sourced articles ( N  = 4,277) involved analyses of titles and abstracts. This process resulted in 812 records. Some reasons for exclusion included: studies related to studying English language; use of social media for communication purposes; studies focused on cyberbullying; social media addiction; social media marketing.

The second level of screening involved checking the full paper, classifying the study in terms of sources and to identify theoretical frameworks or models—hence selecting them for the content analysis. This resulted in 772 records, which were all eligible for bibliometric analysis. The following four characteristics were most predominant: (i) studies presenting a theoretical framework / model ( n  = 55), (ii) empirical studies about teaching and learning without theory ( n  = 221), (iii) studies about perceptions and attitudes without theory ( n  = 424), and (iv) conceptual studies ( n  = 72). For the content analysis, only the 55 studies that utilised a theoretical framework / model were included (Fig.  1 ).

The PRISMA flowchart

4.1 Procedure

Analyses commenced with bibliometric analysis of the 772 articles obtained through the second screening, identifying the main characteristics of the selected publications (year of publication, publication venues, authors, institutions, countries, and most frequent used terms).

Network visualization displaying the relationships among the main words used in abstracts were created using the VOS clustering technique (Van Eck & Waltman, 2010 ). VOSViewer software provides distance-based maps and identifies the clusters of co-occurring words, enabling identification of most used terms and the relationships between them (Van Raan, 2019 ; Waltman et al., 2010 ).

To display the dominant terms, full counting method has been considered (Leydesdorff & Park, 2016 ). Thus, each publication has the overall weight equal to Ni (Ni being the total number of terms in the “i”-publication) and each term has a weight of 1. The size of the circle and the label in the map is associated with the weight of a term. In general, the stronger the relationship between two terms, the closer they are located on the map. We have considered the “total link strength attribute”, which indicates the total strength of a term’s links with other terms (Gutiérrez-Salcedo et al., 2018 ). Whilst curved lines on the maps represent the links between terms, colours are used to indicate the cluster to which each term belongs.

Finally, the evolution of “social media” and other main terms used in abstracts were analysed and presented with the overlay visualization in Vosviewer (terms are coloured based on their year of publication). We used the viridis colour scheme obtained from Matplotlib, where by default, colours range from blue-green to yellow scheme.

For the second analytic component of the study, qualitative content analysis methods were applied to the 55 studies resulting from the second screening. The objectives were to gain an in-depth understanding of the theories/models employed in the studies and to identify the main research aims linked to the employed theories/models. Content analysis was based on a number of categories which were adapted from Manca and Ranieri ( 2013 ) and derived from analysis by author 1 and author 2. This process resulted in the following categories: (i) attitudes of social media as learning tool (studies which main aim was to investigate students’ or instructors’ attitudes towards the use of social media); (ii) social media as a supportive learning tool (studies that supported active collaborative learning, student engagement, effective communication, enhancing group task performance); (iii) efficacy of social media as learning tool (studies that focused on the impact of social media on different aspects of teaching and learning, such as: community building and informal learning). For the purpose of ensuring a level of reliability, an iterative process of analysis was carried by author 1 and author 2, and the individually derived codes were double-checked by comparing results. Once the set of codes had been recognised, dataset coding reliability was calculated (Cohen’s k = 0.85). The disagreement was resolved with discussion and subsequent consensus.

5.1 Study characteristics

Figure  2 provides the time evolution of the annual scientific production for the period analysed. The number of publications shows an upward trend until 2018, with two relatively higher values in 2015 and 2018. A slight decline is observed from 2019 onwards. The sharp drop during 2021 is due to the fact that the study covered the period between January and June of that year. We have applied a segmented linear regression (Liu et al., 1997 ), with two break points, in 2015 and 2018 (Liu & Qian, 2009 ). The segmented least squares forecast for the year 2021, provides an estimated annual value of 74 publications with a high reliability (R 2  = 0.94).

Number of papers on social media as a teaching and learning tool (2009–2021). *estimated value in 2021

Table 2 shows the number of publications by journal (conferences proceedings were not included). This represents the distribution of the journals with a production of seven or more records involving 91 publications (11.7% of the corpus). It was found that Computers & Education and Education and Information Technologies have published the most articles on social media as a teaching and learning tool, with a total of 18 articles each. The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology , Computers in Human Behaviour , and Internet and Higher Education had 13, 12, and 9 related articles, respectively.

The scholars who published the most articles are presented in Table 3 . Overall, the data set containing the 772 articles comprises a total of 2,754 authors. For the purpose of this particular set of analyses, details about professional profile and number of publications are focused on journals only. The average number of co-authors was 3.56. Therefore, authors with more than four relevant published articles were considered core authors in the aforementioned field. The list is a combination of nine leading and emerging scholars from wide geographical areas. As shown, three scholars are from universities in Malaysia, three from Romania, one from Hong Kong, one from Italy, and one from South Africa. The disciplinary areas of the core authors represent a variety of disciplines, with many of these related to the education and technological fields.

5.2 Dominant terms and research trends

The final part of the bibliometric analysed the most frequently represented words in abstracts to identify most used terms and research trends (Han & Ellis, 2019 ; Leung et al., 2017 ). Firstly, the empty words (e.g., connectors, conjunctions, prepositions, articles, adjectives) were omitted. Secondly, words whose frequency was less than 20 occurrences in abstracts were considered not relevant to the research and were excluded. Synonyms and acronyms were associated. Finally, 305 terms with the largest levels of occurrence in the abstracts were included in the analysis from a total of 22,079 words. The analysis of these terms is illustrated in Fig.  3 and Fig.  4 by means of five clusters, each represented by a different colour. The distribution of the number of keywords by year of publication is presented in Fig.  4 .

Most used words found in abstracts

Evolution over time of terms in abstracts

The word student was the most commonly used word in the abstracts ( n  = 2,156), followed by social media ( n  = 1,077), use ( n  = 1,043), Facebook ( n  = 858), and learning ( n  = 667) (see Table 6 in Appendix A for terms with more than 120 occurrences). These results indicate that the articles mostly focused on Facebook use as a social media for learning. Furthermore, the platforms that attracted the greatest attention were Facebook ( n  = 858) and Twitter ( n  = 274). Figure  3 shows the most used word in abstract. As can be seen, the high impact term “student” presents strong connections with use, social media, learning, technology, tool, social network, group, Facebook, and Twitter. Five clusters of terms were discovered as part of the visualization. Each cluster was constituted from a set of terms that are clearly delimited by their location in the map. These clusters reveal the presence of five thematic strands in the literature that focus on: (i) “student-education-platform-process-communication” (colour red); (ii) “Facebook-Twitter-participation-interaction” (green); (iii) “Learning-Use-Technology” (blue); (iv) “social media-university-social media use-social media platform-educational use” (yellow); and (v) “academic attitude-performance-intention-usefulness-satisfaction” (purple).

When the distribution of these words is shown on a year-by-year basis (Fig.  4 ), it is revealed that studies focused on the study of Facebook page, Facebook use, informal learning, and peripheral terms such as blog, community, video, or web, is located in the initial years under study. High impact terms such as Facebook, student, learning, use, education, or social network are published on average in studies between 2014 and 2016. The term “social media” is introduced from 2016, in papers between 2017–2018, linking it to terms such as “data”, “educational use”, and “educational tool”. From 2018 onwards, the focus of the studies is towards “attitudes”, “influence”, “intention”, “performance”, or “satisfaction”.

Four research trends are identifiable throughout the period of study (Table 4 ). From 2010–2014, studies were mainly focused on Facebook as a community of practice, blog, and for informal learning. From 2014–2016, Facebook was still relevant, but studies had more emphasis on the educational learning process of the use of Facebook by students. During the period of 2016–2018, the term “social media” peaked and studies were focused on social media for education and as an educational tool. From 2018 onwards, the focus of the studies was towards “attitudes”, “influence”, “intention”, “performance”, or “satisfaction”.

5.3 Theoretical frameworks/models

The findings show that only 55 studies out of 772 cited a theoretical framework or model, this is only 7% of total number of studies. Content analysis was used to analyse more in-depth information about the 55 selected papers. A total of 16 frameworks/models were identified. They were grouped into six categories of similarity. These are shown in Table 5 in relation to the number of citing studies per category. The number of citing studies is higher than the sample size ( n  = 55) because there are some studies that uses more than one framework/model. The most cited theoretical framework/model was technology acceptance models which were cited in 41 studies. This is followed by learning theories cited in 11 studies. Social capital theory/innovation diffusion theory is cited in 5 studies; uses and gratification theory/social gratification theory cited in 3 studies; lastly, Information systems success model/communication theory and theory of reasoned action/theory of planned behaviour are only cited in 2 studies, respectively.

Figure  5 shows the use of the main framework(s)/model(s) categories from 2013 to 2021. Figure  5 highlights that studies began citing theory in 2013, with further significant increases identifiable in 2017 and 2020. It also indicates that technology acceptance theories are predominantly the most employed theories in all years, 2020 having the highest publications.

Theoretical frameworks/models over time

The 55 studies were further analysed by study aims which were categorised using the following classification: (1) attitudes of social media as learning tool ( n  = 32); (2) social media as a supportive learning tool ( n  = 16); (3) efficacy of social media as learning tool ( n  = 7). The study aims over time are revealed in Fig.  6 . The results indicate that publications with the aim of investigating attitudes of social media as a learning tool are the most common with 2017 being the most popular year of publication.

Research aims over time

Finally, to represent the empirical relationships among the aims and the theoretical frameworks/models, a word co-occurrence analysis providing a similarity matrix was carried out (Hu et al., 2013 ). A measure of similarity is obtained by counting the co-occurrences (Yang et al., 2012 ), which makes it possible to represent the relationships (conceptual clustering) that exist among the aims and frameworks/models (Chen et al., 2019 ). Direct lines represent connections between the theoretical frameworks/models. Figure  7 indicates that the strongest relationship is presented by studies with the aim to explore attitudes of social media as learning tool by integrating a technology acceptance model. This is followed by information and communication theories being used to explain the efficacy of social media as learning tool. Learning theories are mostly related to studies that are aimed at exploring social media as a supportive learning tool.

Research aims & theoretical frameworks/models network

6 Discussion

The current study has mapped the scientific literature regarding the use of social media in higher education teaching and learning (2009 to 2021). The central aim was to document research trends, dominant terms, and the main characteristics of studies, with a focus on providing a new perspective on the theoretical groundings that may explain the pedagogical integration of social media within higher education teaching and learning.

These results extend the findings of other systematic literature reviews regarding social media use in education-conducted on single or multiple platforms (Lopes et al., 2017 ; Manca, 2020 ; Tang & Hew, 2017 )-and across various disciplinary fields (Barrot, 2021a ; Rehm et al., 2019 ). The main finding indicates a shift from studies focused on Facebook, as the most researched social media platform and its use by students for informal learning, to a more recent trend from 2018 onwards showing studies still focused on attitudes, intentions, and satisfaction of social media as a teaching and learning tool. This is aligned with results from the content analysis which showed that only a minority of studies report the use of theory, and those that do report research aims based on the investigation of attitudes towards social media as a learning tool by integrating a technology acceptance model.

The following sections discuss the three research questions of this study in relation to results concerning both the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool and its pedagogical integration.

6.1 Characteristics of the scientific literature

Overall, the data show a constant growing trend in the number of publications concerned with social media use in teaching and learning, with an increase in two different years (2015 and 2018). This trend confirms a growing interest in the research community regarding the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool (Bodily et al., 2019 ; Valtonen et al., 2022 ). One of the reasons for the rapid growth of research in this field may be related to the relevance of social media platforms in students’ daily lives. We anticipate that further studies will be conducted as new social media uses and applications increases. For example, since its launch in 2017, TikTok has become the fastest growing social media platform worldwide, reaching nearly 83 million monthly active users as of February 2021 (Statista, 2021 ). From an educational perspective, TikTok has proven to be an effective pedagogical tool in corporal expression courses (Escamilla-Fajardo et al., 2021 ) and for political participation and civic engagement (Literat & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2021 ).

In terms of publication venues, Computers & Education , which is an international peer reviewed journal and one of the most prominent journals on the use of technology in education (Arici et al., 2019 ), has published the highest number of papers. The majority of the publications are also international, implying that educational research in social media is pedagogically used in local, regional, or international learning contexts (Barrot, 2021a ).

Geographically, results showed widespread interest across different countries, with more than half of the studies conducted outside of Europe. Whilst Barrot ( 2021a ) has reported that the US was by far the leading country in this field, Manca ( 2020 ) found that most of the research was from the Middle East.

6.2 Dominant terms and research trends

Based on the clusters of terms identified from the analysis of the most used words in abstracts, the platforms that attracted the greatest attention were Facebook and Twitter. In her review, Barrot ( 2021a ) also found that these platforms were the most popular, and suggested that Facebook and Twitter are more likely to be used for teaching and learning as they offer multiple affordances when compared to other less developed/newer platforms.

While the phenomenon of social media remains relatively new to academia research, it has grown in popularity throughout the analysed period. In the initial years, the literature showed evidence of research on the use of social media for informal learning (e.g., Forkosh-Baruch & Hershkovitz, 2012 ) through Facebook (e.g., Hew, 2011 ), and blogs (e.g., Zinger & Sinclair, 2013 ).

In our corpus of literature, the term “social media” starts to flourish from 2016. Many studies with a focus on the use of social media as an educational tool started to be published in that timeframe (e.g., Balakrishnan, 2017 ; Manca & Ranieri, 2016a , 2016b ; Sobaih et al., 2016 ). From 2018 to 2021, research trends were more focused on studies about attitudes and satisfaction, confirming trends from earlier studies on attitudes regarding Facebook (e.g., Manca & Ranieri, 2013 , 2016a , 2016b ). Manca and Ranieri ( 2016c ) argued that whilst there was a favourable attitude towards social media use for education, many academics would express a preference for using social media for personal and professional use, rather than for teaching and learning purposes.

6.3 Theoretical frameworks/models and study aims

The third research question examined the studies which had included a theoretical framework/model to explain the integration of social media in learning and teaching. The findings show that only 55 studies out of 772 cited a theoretical framework or model. This result demonstrates a general lack of theoretically based research. This concurs with the findings of Manca et al. ( 2021 ) who concluded that studies that do not integrate learning theory run the risk of superficial understanding of the pedagogical advantages of social media for learning and teaching.

Our findings show that 16 theoretical frameworks/models guided the 55 studies, with the technology acceptance models being the most frequently used. These theoretical frameworks/models were present in 41 studies. Thus, with the overwhelming presence of technology acceptance models, future research should endeavour to adopt other theoretical frameworks/models to verify the results obtained from TAM and its variants. For example, Al-Qaysi et al. ( 2020 ) argued that the development of a theoretical framework that can best examine the integration of social media for learning and teaching can be justified by the use of the uses and gratification theory (Katz, 1959 ) and the social constructivism theory (Wertsch, 1985 ). Furthermore, the use of social media for teaching and learning should be a pedagogical decision and not a technology one (Everson et al., 2013 ). Considering that educational technology research to date has aimed to understand the integration of, and factors affecting, technology use, mainly by employing theories from psychology and information systems, it was found in a recent study by Valtonen et al. ( 2022 ) that the largest amount of educational research targeted how technology can support learning processes based on different learning theories. This is in contrast with our findings which have shown that technology acceptance theories are the most studied frameworks/models in social media for teaching and learning. The reason for this contradiction is that Valtonen et al.’s ( 2022 ) review identified studies with an educational technology focus and not on social media specifically. Indeed, technology research’s history is long, rich and broad (Weller, 2020 ). However, this indicates that the use of socially oriented theories of learning and constructionist tradition within various technology-enhanced contexts and environments is the most common fit to understand technology integration.

Aligned with our findings is the work of Ngai et al. ( 2015 ) and of Chintalapati and Daruri ( 2017 ) who declared that the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) is widely used in social media research to explain the acceptance of social media and to measure the factors that influence its adoption.

Our findings also show that the second most employed theoretical framework/models were those related to learning theories. In particular, social constructivism theory was the second most cited approach. These publications peaked from 2017, indicating that the use of learning theories is still in its infancy. Greenhow and Askari ( 2017 ), who assessed the state of social media research in education, found that the major gap in studies was concerned with the link to concrete measures of learning. This finding aligns with an earlier review study that noted increasing interest for social media use, but insufficient empirical support for claims that such technology can be an effective learning tool (Tess, 2013 ). Reflecting on these findings, Greenhow et al. ( 2019 ) suggested that research should focus on practices, outcomes, and learning across different contexts.

As social media is an emerging technology, it is important to continually understand attitudes towards it. Hence, it is not surprising that most of the studies in our analysis were designed to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of students and academics towards the use of social media as a learning and teaching tool. In theory, this is best explained by using an information systems theory such as the TAM (Ngai et al., 2015 ). However, this does not explain best practice when introducing social media as a learning and teaching tool. Many studies in the analysis which cited learning theories used TAM with social constructivism theory to examine collaborative learning and engagement through social media use (Alalwan et al., 2019 ; Alamri et al., 2020b ; Al-Rahmi, et al., 2018 ).

Since Technology acceptance theories are designed to examine teachers’ and students’ readiness to incorporate social media into teaching and learning practices, it is not surprising that they are aligned with attitudes towards social media as a teaching and learning tool. However, it appears that academic research has not much progressed in terms of providing better theoretical strength to pedagogical models and teaching practices.

The second most commonly found research aim in the studies was related to active collaborative learning, student engagement, effective communication and enhancing group performance. This research aim was supported by learning theories. For example, Yu et al. ( 2010 ) investigated student engagement on Facebook from a pedagogical standpoint based on social learning theory. Al-Rahmi et al. ( 2015 ) explored the factors that contribute to the enhancement of collaborative learning and engagement through social media based on the theory of social constructivist learning. This is in line with Churcher et al. ( 2014 ) study who argued that using social constructivist theory has the ability to develop a community of practice, and maximize learning potential.

Lastly, only 7 studies focused on the efficacy of social media as a learning tool which are supported by information and communication theories. For example, Chaka and Govender ( 2020 ) tested the implementation of mobile learning using Facebook as a medium of communication using a combination of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) model, Information Systems (IS) success model and the educational use of Facebook theory. Al-Rahmi et al. ( 2018 ) investigated the use of social media to encourage sharing knowledge, information, and discussion based on constructivism theory, technology acceptance model, and communication theory.

7 Conclusion and implications

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, we aimed to reveal research trends and most commonly used terms of social media for teaching and learning in higher education. The journals that published the most related papers, core scholars working on this field, and the countries in which the related research was based by employing a bibliometric analysis of the research. This analysis suggested that this research field is growing rapidly and evolving. This may be explained by the fact that social media have revolutionized the life of many people and thus attracting much attention.

Second, we employed content analysis to provide a new perspective on the theoretical groundings of the articles in the field. The results showed a lack of theoretical based research in this field, with some evidence of technology acceptance models and learning models as key theories that best explains the integration of social media as a teaching and learning tool.

Although the current study has provided useful insights regarding social media use in teaching and learning, some limitations need to be acknowledged. First, this study was not intended to report, discuss and analyse the findings of each study included in this review. Instead, it aimed to provide some numerical evidence that show the evolving research trends of social media for teaching and learning, as well as the frameworks/models studied and purpose of those focal studies. Second, this study analyses only the articles indexed in the WoS and ERIC database. Therefore, future studies could include articles from Scopus database, book chapters, book reviews, or other publications outside the chosen database. Thirdly, social media research is in its early stages, therefore new studies will continue to surface and continued proliferation of new social media technologies (Ngai et al., 2015 ). More recent social media in education research should be considered in future studies. Finally, future research could explore other research perspectives like research methods and contexts/disciplines.

This paper provides a new perspective on the theoretical groundings in the field of social media as a teaching and learning tool. Several implications can be drawn from this. Firstly, most studies are focused on investigating students and/or instructors’ attitudes towards the use of social media by integrating technology acceptance models. Future studies should focus on “best practice” for integrating social media into pedagogy, tied to student learning outcomes by integrating learning theories. Such studies may also help shape future research on social media integration in formal education, resulting potentially in solutions to educational problems rather than technological ones. Secondly, it was noted that studies employing technology acceptance models may be overwhelming the greater body of literate at present, and therefore any future research should look at post-acceptance studies, such as the impact of usage on learning and/or issues relating to it (such as privacy, security, and trust) (Manca & Ranieri, 2016b ). Finally, this study provided a review of the research landscape on the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool which can be used as a baseline in further advancing the field towards its full maturity.

As interest among scholars increases in using social media for teaching and learning, questions to consider for further research include the following: Can social media that are designed commercial purposes support learners in an educational environment? What does the adoption of social media mean from a theoretical perspective? In this regard, future work should address the pedagogical practices which are suitable for use with social media based on sound theoretical groundings.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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School of Education, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland

Eva Perez & Conor Mc Guckin

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Stefania Manca

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Perez, E., Manca, S., Fernández-Pascual, R. et al. A systematic review of social media as a teaching and learning tool in higher education: A theoretical grounding perspective. Educ Inf Technol 28 , 11921–11950 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11647-2

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Received : 05 August 2022

Accepted : 01 February 2023

Published : 01 March 2023

Issue Date : September 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11647-2

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