Social Media Use in Algerian Universities: University of Constantine 2 Case Study

Abstract

Social media technologies initially used for socializing, and entertainment have in recent years expanded their reaches into learning activities providing an open space for students’ engagement. The positive effect of such technologies on pedagogy is to make learning applicable to the cyber environment to achieve independent and collaborative learning. Students learn to communicate and collaborate electronically. This requires rethinking the way pedagogical activities are carried out to develop synergistic learning relationships to create the best learning model in line with this new educational paradigm. This paper investigates Algerian students’ engagement to understand the developmental implications of academic achievement. The author seeks to advance the use of instructional interactions in two ways: i: enhancing the academic validity of social networking, ii: making the link to students’ collaborative learning explicit. Data is collected from 300 students. Findings show that social media are used for a multitude of purposes and Facebook is most popular