The views of academic administrators and faculty members with the use of social media for teaching and learning in higher education

As a result of the rapid development of the Internet and technology, it has become easier to access and share information. Social media that has become one of the essential mass communication media by entering our lives with the use of the Internet, connects people and conveys information more quickly and effectively independent of time and place. Besides, social media is a broad platform that enables individuals to present their thoughts, perspectives and interests through interactive communication in a virtual environment. Nowadays, social media tools used in all fields such as politics, health, economy, transportation, public services are also used in the learning and teaching process. For this purpose, it is important to investigate the social media usage and reasons for teaching and learning purposes in higher education institutions. The main aim of this research is to determine the views of the academic administrators and faculty members with social media usage in the teaching and learning process, concerning the reasons and the expectations of the social media in the process of learning and teaching. With this purpose, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 20 academic teaching staff from different academic units, titles and positions in Aksaray University. According to the findings of this research, the use of social media in teaching and learning process was similar in terms of using and avoiding faculty. In this thesis, both the support and barrier states in the use of social media for teaching purposes were identified. It has been determined that the instructors who use social media prefer YouTube most and even opposing faculty members find YouTube useful and use them effectively in their courses. The motives stated by the faculty that use social media were; student based reasons such as students' preference to use these environments, contributing to students' perceptions and learning, fast and effective communication with students, as well as accessibility and equal opportunities in education. Those who do not prefer to use social media claimed that the students acted unethically in these platforms, the difficulty of creating a traditional classroom environment and maintaining the relationship between the learner and the teacher. As a result, in order to integrate social media tools with teaching and learning process, it is necessary to raise awareness of faculty members and students and to use social media tools that have a code of ethics, appropriate and can be integrated into the learning environments.