Perceived Usefulness and Ease of Use of Social Media among Pre-service Teachers in Ghana

Abstract

The study examined the level of Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Perceived Ease of Use (PEOU) of social media within the framework of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in order to ascertain the usefulness of social media among Pre-service Teachers in Ghana. Stratified random sampling was used to select 391 Pre-service Teachers for the study. Data was collected using a questionnaire and analysed based on descriptive statistics and an Independent sample t-test. This study found that majority of the Pre-service Teachers use two social media platforms; WhatsApp and Facebook. The study further established a significant difference between Pre-service Teachers whose usage of social media sites specifically affect their perceived usefulness and those that specifically affect their perceived ease of use. The study encouraged teachers to integrate e-learning applications like Blackboard, Google Classroom and Edmodo in their courses (using the blended learning approach) as they have social media-like features that students have already embraced. This study contributed to research on the possibility of integrating social media into teaching and learning in Colleges of Education in Ghana.

Keywords

• pre-service teachers
• social media
• perceived usefulness
• perceived ease of use
• technology acceptance model (tam).