The Students’ Behavior in Involving the Cognitive Processes on the Utilization of Social Media

The utilization of social media in learning process has been applied at colleges or universities, although the maximum effectiveness of social media utilization in the learning can only be obtained by involving the six levels of cognitive processes. This study aimed to provide an overview of the use of social media by the college students for their learning needs as well as measuring the cognitive domains involved by students through their behavior in using social media. This study used quantitative approach and questionnaire for data collection.

The result obtained wasthat the highest use of social media was blogging. The behavior of social media usage involved all levels of cognitive domain. Nevertheless, it needed to be prepared strategy of utilization of the online forum on social media to maximize cognitive processes of understanding and evaluating in discussion activity.

Keywords: behavior, college student, domain, cognitive, social media, learning, higher education

1. Contents

   • 1 Introduction
   • 2 Method

   Introduction

Internet technology leads to shifting lifestyles. The comfort of internet access such as relatively low cost of access, availability of public spaces facilitated with internet access and devices for various internet access (smartphones, tablets, etc.). APJII survey results in 2017 showed that 54.68% (143.26 million) Indonesian people are internet users. 49.52% of them aged between 19-34 years old which was the age range of students with penetration of 74.23%. Of all internet usage, access to social media service reached 87.13% (APJII survey, 2017). The results of this survey indicated that the people of Indonesia have a very high dependence on the internet, especially among students. Its interesting and collaborative features became internet’s advantages which caused high access to social media. These advantages have given the potential for the social media to become a medium of e-learning based interaction which is very effective to achieve learning objectives (Mc Gowan, 2012).

Various studies conducted showed positive roles of social media utilization in learning (Stacy & Tucay, 2015;). Social media such as twitter and blogs have driven the student centered approach as it facilitates wider interaction in college among students and students with teachers (Chawinga, 2017, Chao, 2011). This condition enables deep learning for students through integrative and reflective learning that train the students to use high-level of thinking skills (Paretz, 2016) and creativity (Roebuck, 2013). Social media could improve the students’ feedback, and collaborative work skills especially in project creation (Thapanee, 2014).

Social media consists of several categories and types depending on the function and benefits provided. This study, used 4 categories of social media quoted from Roebuck [4] as follows:

• Social Networking: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Google+, Ning, hi5, bebo
• Blogging: WordPress, Blogger, BlogHer
• Wikis: Wikia, Wikidot, Wikimedia, Wikispaces, Wikinews, wikipedia
• Image or Video Sharing: YouTube, Video, Openfilm, flicker, slideshare

The use of social media is based on the cognitive needs to obtain new information and knowledge [7]. It indicates that a person uses social media for learning purposes. In learning process, there are 3 processes that take place, which occur almost simultaneously, namely the process of obtaining new information, transforming information and testing the relevance and accuracy of knowledge [8]. The three processes are aligned and summarized into the cognitive domain which, according to Bloom & Krathwohl is divided into 6 levels of thinking process known as Bloom’s taxonomy[9]. The levels consist of Remembering (C1), Understanding (C2), Applying (C3), Analyzing (C4), Evaluating (C5) and Creating (C6). According to the six levels of the cognitive domain, Churches describes the explanation process in Bloom's digital taxonomy, which is the application of cognitive domain levels in digital-based media.

Currently, the utilization of social media has been mostly done by lecturers at universities including at one private university in Salatiga, Central Java Indonesia. Observations made in the Faculty of Information Technology of the university showed that social media was used to support the faculty in both academic and non academic activities. It means that the faculty, especially lecturers and students realized the potential of social media in supporting the success of the learning process. Nevertheless, practically, the effective use of social media in learning process should facilitate the overall process of thinking proposed by Bloom so that its benefits stated by previous researchers could be gained. The study of the role of social media in the construction of knowledge and patterns of previous cognitive dimensions has been done by Hou et al and the result shows that in online discussions using facebook, students tend to only involve the thinking process of understanding through information or knowledge sharing (Hou 2015). In that study, the cognitive domain analysis was only seen on one platform which was facebook.

This research studied the cognitive domains performed on some social media which were commonly used by students. The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of the use of social media by the students for their learning needs as well as measuring the cognitive domains involved through the students’ behavior in using social media. The results of this study couldfurther be a reference for lecturers in choosing social media and designing learning that utilizes social media to facilitate the students using high-levelof thinking skill.

2. Method

The research design of this study was using quantitative approach with survey method to measure the students’ behavior in utilizing social media for their learning needs. The population of the respondents were students of the Faculty of Information Technology who were still academically active of the year of 2013, 2014 and 2015, with total of 1500 active students. With margin of error of 10% then the number of samples used in the study was 299 students . The samples were taken randomly by considering the proportion of students in four study programs: Visual Communication Design (DKV) 18%, 23% Information System (SI) 23%, Informatics Engineering (TI) (53%) and 6% Informatics and Computer Engineering Education (PTIK).

The behavior was measured through self assessment using questionnaire consisting of 18 statement items describing the behavior of the use of social media that represented the cognitive domain derived from Bloom’s digital taxonomy (Churches, 2008). Response on each statement item in the form of Likert scale of 1-5. In the questionnaire, there were items used to know the types of social media in the form of a checklist while items used to know the purpose of the social media use in the form of blank space or open question. The result of the validity test of the questionnaire instrument showed that each item of question was valid with reliability of 0.913.

The quantitative data obtained were analyzed by descriptive statistics through the presentation of data tables as well as the calculation of the mean values ??to determine the level of behavior and standard deviation (SD) for the distribution of respondents' answers on each item. The result of the calculation of the average value was converted into the criteria of very high category (x4), high (3.4).

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