BUSINESS EDUCATION STUDENTS UTILIZATION OF SOCIAL NETWORKING TECHNOLOGIES FOR RESEARCH IN TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN DELTA STATE

Abstract

The main purpose of the study was to determine business education students' utilization of social networking technologies for research in tertiary institutions in Delta State. One research question guided the study and one hypothesis was tested. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study. The population of the study consisted of all 1,245 final year business education students from 2017/2018 academic session from the five tertiary institutions offering business education programme in the State. Instrument used for data collection was a validated five point rating scale questionnaire according to the research question guiding the study. The application of Cronbach Alpha on the obtained data yielded a score of 0.89 for internal consistency which was deemed reliable for the study. Arithmetic mean was used to analyze the research question while the standard deviation was used to ascertain the homogeneity or otherwise of the respondents' ratings. t-test was used to analyze the hypothesis. The findings revealed that business education students rarely utilize social networking technologies for research. The findings further revealed that students in universities and colleges of education did not differ on the extent they utilize social networking technologies for research. Based on the findings of the study, the following recommendations were made among others that the administrators of business education programmes should engage in regular orientation and re-orientation on the need to use of social networking technologies for their research work. It was further recommended that network providers should be invited to seminars and workshops geared towards educating students on the need to use social network technologies in their research work.

Key words: Business Education, Students, Utilization, Social Networking Technologies, Research, Tertiary Institutions