A Quantitative Study on the Impact of the Usage of the Social Media on Student

Academic Performance: The university of Tabuk as an example

Abstract:
Owing to the great technological growth in networks, the use of social media has met a rapid
growth among the few past decades. This fact make them very popular and useful for the
communication amongst university students. In fact, these social websites can be a good
manner to exchange the information between students and even with their teachers. However,
excessive use of the social media can affect the student academic performance and make this
use in question. This research tries to investigate about the impact of the social media use on
student academic performance, in a quantitative way, by conducting a survey on university
students in Saudi Arabia especially in Tabuk university. The survey also explored which social
network is the most popular among Tabuk university students and which one is useful for their
academic skills.
The results of this paper can be useful to help the administrative staff of the university to
propose an effective plan to enhance the academic performance for the students by improving
or not the use of the social media sites.
Keywords: Quantitative study, Social media networks, Analytic analysis, Academic
Performance, Tabuk University Students.

1. INTRODUCTION
This research draws a conclusion from an earlier published research in [4]. This interest is
explained since the great growth of the social media usage in the last years. The social media
become very popular and play an important role in all domains of our lives especially in
education. For this reason, in the last decade, researchers pay more attention for the use and
the impact of social media on the educational operation. In [1], authors prove that the use of
social media plays several roles such as sharing ideas between educational staff, helping
students to build their own communities in order to collaborate with each other, facilitating the
art of learning and reaching out to the students. Many studies such as [2, 3, and 5] have
questioned the impact of social media usage on the academic performance of students in other
countries such as USA, Nigeria and Pakistan.
In fact, in Saudi Arabia, it exists some researches that examine the impact of social media
usage on students' academic performance like [6, 7] but the particularity of our research is that
it focus in Tabuk university students. The first part of our research, which is a descriptive study
of it, is detailed in [4]. Whereas, in this paper, we analyze a quantitative method to conduct the
study. As in [4], the investigation is made online and by paper in order to achieve the best
collection of answers among the Tabuk university students. The study consists in collecting
information about the use of the social media and its impact in the academic performance.
This paper is structured as follows. In section two, we review the literature and the related work
to our research. Then, the section three describes the research methodology and the section
four presents the data analysis and results. Finally, the section five gives further discussion of
the findings and concludes the paper.

2. RELATED WORK
This section presents an overview of the relevant literatures in social media use in the
educational society in order to gain a deep understanding in the research domain.
2.1 The evolution of social media
The social media are defined as web-based applications that allow people to create, share or
exchange information, ideas and pictures or videos in virtual communication and networks.
Among the most popular social media are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. The
great growth of social media is proved in 2016 by the statistics given in [8] where Facebook had
3 million reach monthly in average; Twitter had 500 million active users worldwide. The entire
community of students is constantly connected to the social network sites. The teenagers and
college students (age 18 - 29) are among the highest users of the online social media [9]. They
use these sites for interaction, entertainment, and even for information seeking which incite
researchers to investigate the way of use that should be considered in order to such social
media participate in enhancing the learning process.

3. METHODOLOGY
A quantitative approach has been considered in this study by using a questionnaire distribution.
By this investigation, we asked students about their opinions in the use of social media and how
it enhance the learning operation; we have asked them also about which is the best social
network that improve the educational process.
The questionnaire was divided into two sections. The first one concerns with the personal data
of the respondents such as gender, educational level and their study field. The second section
consists the different questions that are related with the use of the social media.

In fact, the aim of the survey is to find answers for the following questions
R1 – Which social network is the most popular among Tabuk university students?
R2 – How can the social media networks improve the communication and the relation between
the students and their teachers?
R3 – How the social media networks can improve the educational process during the lecture?
R4 – Does the use of the social media networks benefic for the educational process?

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, the data collected is presented and then analyzed. the questionnaire was
distributed over 90 days. The respondents are 270 students from all the institutes of the
university of Tabuk. The population sample consists of 45% male and 55% female. 37% of the
respondents are in the doctoral stage and 17% are in the second year of their academic study.
4.1 The most popular social network among Tabuk university students
To have an effective answer about the most popular social network among the students, we
have first questioned them if they have multiple social networks or not. 46% of respondents in
this study have at least three profiles in the social networks as illustrated in Figure 1. This
guarantees that the respondents have at least checked many social networks in order to be able
to choose which one is the most popular among students.
Figure 1. Percentage of respondents having multiple social networks.
The figure 2 shows the number of respondents on different social networks. YouTube is the most
popular site that is used to communicate among students after that we find Twitter then other social
networks e. g. LinkedIn, Instagram and What's up then Facebook. Out of the 270 respondents, 40% of
the respondents use YouTube to communicate between them while 20% use Twitter network. The
results demonstrates that YouTube is almost twice popular than the Twitter among Tabuk university
students.

Figure 2. The most social networks used to communicate.

4.2 How the use of the social media networks improve the
communication between the students and their teachers?
Two questions were used to measure the way in which the social media improve the communication
between the students and the teachers. We have investigated if the faculty members share their social
networking sites with their students and if these students use them to communicate with their
professors.
Figure 3 illustrates the opinions of respondents about the fact if the teachers are sharing their social
networking sites. The responses are classified into three categories namely yes, to a certain extent and
no. From the figure 3, we can deduce clearly that the faculty members of the university of Tabuk are not
interested in sharing their social sites with their students where we find only 21% of the respondents
confirm that their teachers provide to them their social networking sites. This is explained by the fact
that the social sites are considered as a part of the private life of the teachers that should not be shared
with their students.

Figure 3. Teachers sharing their social sites with students.

The same result is deduced when we asked about the fact if the students use the social networks to
communicate with the faculty members. The figure 4 illustrates the responses where only 24% confirm
that there is a communication between them and their teachers by means of the social media networks
while 76% of respondents deny the investigated fact.

Figure 4. The communication between the faculty members and the students using the social networks.

4.3 R3 – How the social media networks can improve the educational process during the lecture?
To quantify the effect that can have the use of the social media in the educational operation during the
lecture, three questions were used. The questions are as follows:
 Do you agree the student's use of the means of social communication during the lecture under the
pretext of academic research is a major factor in understanding the lecture?
 Do you support the use of social websites during the lecture?
The results shows that the use of students for the social media during the lecture time for the purpose
of academic research does not encounter the approval of the respondents where 106 of respondents
agree with the latter fact whereas 83 of them are neutral and 81 of respondents refuse that the
students utilize the social media during the time of the lecture. These results are illustrating in the figure
5.

Figure 5. The use of students for the social media during the lecture for academic purpose.

In general, we have asked the respondents if they support the use of social media during the time
lecture either from the teacher or the student. The results are illustrated in figure 6 and show that 103
of respondents (38%) refuse the use of the social media during the lecture while 92 of them (34%) agree
with this fact and 28% of the respondents (75 respondents) are neutral.
Figure 6. Supporting the use of social websites during the lecture time.

4.4
R4 – Does the use of the social media networks benefic for the educational process?
To analyze if the use of the social media networks is useful for the improvement of the educational
process or not, three questions have been utilized. The questions are as follows:
 Does the teacher have the ability to communicate the required information correctly through the
social networking sites?
 In your opinion, do you think that the social networking has an important role in improving students'
academic performance?
 What are the best social networking sites for the educational process?
The results, illustrated in the figure 7, show that 68 of respondents confirm that the teacher can fluently
ensure the correct information using the social networks. Besides 154 of respondents are neutral

however 48 of them confirm the failure of the teacher to communicate the required information
correctly through the social media.

Figure 7. The communication of the correct information using the social networks.

By investigating the fact if the use of social media plays an important role in improving students'
academic performance, 111 of respondents confirm the latter fact, however another 111 of respondents
are neutral and 48 of them deny that the social media have improved the academic performances of the
students. The figure 8 illustrates the different answers.
Figure 8. The improvement of student academic performance using the social networks.

Finally, as a summary for the questionnaire, we have investigated the students about the best social
network that can improve the educational process. It is approved that the YouTube is the best site that
improve the educational process followed by Twitter then Facebook and then other social networks e. g.
LinkedIn, Instagram and What's up. In fact, Out of the 270 respondents, 37% of the respondents suggest
that YouTube is the best social network that improve the educational process while 36% of respondents
choose Twitter network. The results are illustrated in the figure 9.

Figure 9. The social network that improve the educational process.

5 CONCLUSION
The main purpose of this study was to analyze the use of the social media and its relationship with the
academic performance among Tabuk university students. The results revealed that online social media
had improved the communication between the faculty member staff and the students which facilitate
the communication of the correct information and improve the understanding and the development of
the ideas and the courses. Based on the information collected, it is noticeable to say that the use of the
social media during the lecture time is not recommended from most of respondents. YouTube and
Twitter are the best social networks that improve the educational process according to Tabuk University
students. However, by consideration of the wide usage of the social media by Tabuk university students,
further studies should be conducted with a focus on the impact of social media in the current life
rhythm of students and their social relations.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to acknowledge University of Tabuk for the financial support under research
project number S1437-0257.

Article Findings:

Sampling technique Implemented: Probability Sampling

This article uses a Probability Sampling because it provides all Tabuk University students with a
equal and known probability of being included in the sample. In other words, the student selection
does not change the likelihood that anyone else in the university will get chosen.