Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Faculty of Sheikh, Zayed University, Afghanistan
Information Technology plays an important role in all sectors of life including education. Afghan universities use variety of Information and Communication Technologies to get access to different learning resources and this way can improve quality of education in their classrooms. Social media is an important part of information technology which provides great opportunities for instructors and students to communicate, share, and exchange views on different educational topics. The aim of this research is to find the advantages and disadvantages of using social media for students during learning process in Sheikh Zayed University (SZU). The study found answers to the following questions: Does the university have necessary facilities such as electricity, ICTs, and the Internet? Does each department and faculty of the university have official pages in different Social Media networks? For what purpose the university students use Social Media? The research results indicate that Sheikh Zayed University has the basic facilities such as electricity, ICTs and Internet. More departments and faculties of SZU have pages in popular social media networks and they are used for communication and changing information between instructors and students. About 50 percent of SZU students’ use social media for learning and interaction with instructors and colleagues while the remaining percentile of students do not use social media due to different reasons such as poor ICT literacy skills and limited or not access to ICT tools.
ICT, Social Media, Learning, Interaction, Shiekh Zayed University
