Scholarly record

A STUDY OF THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN BULGARIA

S. Parusheva, Y. Aleksandrova, P. Petrov

Abstract

Social media have become a driver for substantial changes in a number of fields, including business, education and learning practices. They are present in a dominating way in lives of young people in Bulgaria. This study examined the university students’ perceptions/adoption of social media based on the example of the students at the University of Economics – Varna (UE-Varna), Bulgaria. Data was collected and analyzed from online survey of 378 undergraduate students both from bachelor and master degree programmes. This study found that social media are enjoying getting much attention from the students. Almost 100% of respondents possess a Facebook account, and every second student has an account also in YouTube, Google+ and Instagram simultaneously. Most frequently visited are Facebook and YouTube – above 90% and 67% of the user respectively log in daily. This intense presence motivates our study whether state HEIs, teaching students mainly in the fields of social, economic and legal sciences use the potential help of social media in education adequately. One of the possibilities is examined - through the use of Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and integrated social media tools by universities. The results of the study reveal the majority of state HEIs use two LMSs - Moodle and Blackboard Learn, which possess integrated social media tools like discussion forums, chat, wikis, internal messaging, creating a learning groups, collaboration tools, etc. Counting on those incorporated in LMSs social media practices Bulgarian HEIs have the possibility to stimulate and motivate the participation, engagement, collaborative learning of students in formal higher education and to achieve better teaching and academic results.

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