EDUCATION FOR RURAL COMMUNITY: UTILISATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA AMONG MULTI-ETHNIC STUDENTS IN MALAYSIAN BORNEO

Abstract

The current study investigated the level of the use of social media among multi-ethnic students from rural areas and the differences among them based on ethnicity. The study utilised a survey research design using a set of questionnaire that has been developed based on past studies on language learning and social media. The sample of the study consisted of 80 students from selected national secondary schools from rural areas in Borneo. Data collected was analysed using descriptive statistic. Overall, results demonstrated that the majority of students moderately used social media for learning academic subjects. Data also shows that that irrespective of ethnicity, all students are rarely used social media for academic purposes. Facebook has been found to be the most popular social media and it was used for learning academic subjects more often if compared to WhatsApp and YouTube. Therefore, students are supposed to the use of social media skills in learning especially for the improvement of academic learning as past research showed that there was a significant linkage between the use of social media and the academic performances. Indeed, parents and teachers are supposed to have skills in encouraging students to make full use of social media for education purpose in today’s 21st century learning.