| Abstrakt: |
Social media today are an inevitable part of everyday life; networking of individuals and new ways of communication and interaction have emerged in the academic world. They are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across a range of devices and from different locations, thus depending only on the availability of the internet and the will of their users. By enabling the creation and sharing of information, ideas, and interests through virtual communities and networks, whose purpose is to turn communication into interactive dialogue, they have influenced society, economics, politics, science, and education. Students of today are generations who have started virtual life on social media since their early age and do not know the world where there are no computers, cell phones, and social media. Social media is an example of technology students have widely adopted, but the digital gap between students and their educational institutions is evident. Numerous researches show that there is a need for integration of social media into the teaching process because students experience them as self-explanatory. There are many advantages and positive effects on the teaching process, but teachers are less likely to use them because they are more focused on their shortcomings and dangers. The use of technology can be influenced by numerous factors, and the current study is conducted to identify the current status of teachers' usage of social media in higher education and detection of factors which influence the usage of social media in higher education. The questionnaire is based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology named UTAUT model as a theoretical framework, and data is collected on a sample of teachers at the Algebra University College in Zagreb and the University of Applied Sciences Baltazar Zaprešić. This research is the first research conducted among the higher education teachers in the Republic of Croatia, concerned not only with the social media usage for the higher education purposes but also with factors that influence the willingness of higher education teachers to use social media for the higher education purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
