Investigating university students' perceived learning in terms of social media usage habits, digital literacy skills, and control dimension of self-regulation

This study aims to find out the predictive effect of university students' in-school and out-of-school social media usage habits, digital literacy skills, and attention control of self-regulation on perceived learning level. For this purpose, the survey model, a quantitative research type, was used in the study. The study group of the research consists of 847 undergraduate and associate degree students studying at Sinop University. Personal Information Form, Perceived Learning Scale, In-School Social Media Behaviors of University Students Scale, Out-of-School Social Media Behaviors of University Students Scale, Digital Literacy Scale and Attention Control of Self-Regulation Scale were used as data collection tools. Voluntary participation of the participants was considered during the process of data collection. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the data. The data were analyzed on the SPSS software. As a result of the analysis, a positive, significant, and high-level relationship was found between perceived learning and the digital literacy variable. A positive and moderate relationship was identified between perceived learning and the attention control dimension of self-regulation. Additionally, a positive, significant, but low-level relationship was detected between university students' out-of-school social media behaviors and perceived learning. Furthermore, a positive and moderate relationship was found between perceived learning and in-school social media behaviors. The results of multiple regression analysis showed that in-school social media behaviors, out-of-school social media behaviors, attention control of self-regulation and digital literacy variables are significant predictors of the perceived learning level variable. It was also found that digital literacy scores were the variable that explained the perceived learning level of the students in the research group the most. Out-of-school social media behaviors found to be negatively predicted the perceived learning level. According to the result of the analysis, the regression model is statistically significant. Recommendations are presented for researchers and educators based on the results of the study.