Paper Title
The use of Social Media in Education: A Friend or Foe?

Abstract
Namibians, like the rest of the international community, has embraced the usage of social media, however the level of adoption and applicability has hampered the successful integration of social media technologies into the teaching and learning spectrum. Lecturers within the Namibian higher education institutions are aware of social networking sites, however the usage thereof (particularly as an instructional tool) remains on a superficial level. The extend to which this phenomena might impact the students’ academic performance, need to be investigated in order to raise consciousness amongst faculty members and align our pedagogy to the needs of our present-day distance education students. By using this as a backdrop, the purpose of this desktop study is to encourage future empirical research on the impact of social media usage in Namibian Higher Learning institutions, adopt best practices in the usage of social media at higher learning institutions by consulting previous research conducted on the usage of social media as a teaching and learning too, as well as strengthen the local Open and Distance Learning (ODL)research database by contributing to the research of critical focus areas that could impact on the National ODL Policy for Namibia Index Terms - Social Media, Namibia, Higher Education, instructional technology, Open and Distance Learning

Author - Fiona Anderson

Published : Volume-5,Issue-7  ( Jul, 2018 )

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