OPINION OF THE ACADEMICS ON THE APPLICATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN TEACHING AND RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY OF PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT This study explores the feasibility of using social networking sites for teaching and research purposes based on the opinion of faculty and research scholars of various departments that belong to science and technology schools in Pondicherry University. The data were collected through questionnaire using simple random sampling from 22 faculty members and 76 research scholars. The result revealed that majority of the respondents was in favour of using social networking sites for academic purposes. 77.65% of them used Research Gate and Academia.edu was used by 64.89% of the respondents. More than 50% of the respondents opined that privacy policies of SNS are effective and 55.31% of the respondents are satisfied with the use of Social networking sites

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES (ICT)

ABSTRACT Information and communications technology usually abbreviated as ICT, is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), but is usually a more general term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers, middleware as well as necessary software, storage-and audio-visual systems, which enable users to create, access, store, transmit, and manipulate information. In other words, ICT consists of IT as well as telecommunication, broadcast media, all types of audio and video processing and transmission and network based control and monitoring functions. The expression was first used in 1997 in a report by Dennis Stevenson to the UK government and promoted by the new National Curriculum documents for the UK in 2000. The term ICT is now also used to refer to the merging (convergence) of audiovisual and telephone networks with computer networks through a single cabling or lin