Assessment of Students' Familiarity, Adoption, and Use of Social Media in Bahrain

Abstract

Social media is used in many higher education institutions for educational purposes in numerous new and innovative ways. However, in Bahrain the number of higher education students who are aware of and use social media is not clear. It was therefore necessary to conduct an empirical study that would investigate the students' use of social media in higher education in Bahrain. Moreover, the actual adoption of social media in everyday learning situations still remain underexplored, especially in higher education settings. This paper describes a study conducted to investigate the influence of social media use by student in Bahrain. The aims of this study are to assess students' level of familiarity, engagement and frequency of use with social media. The data was collected using two questionnaires. The findings indicate that social media has introduce a new culture of learning among students. In addition, social media applications which are on the increase in usage by students for activities that include studying, access of education content, social communication.