Date of Conferral

2018

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Education

Advisor

Jennifer Courduff

Abstract

Social media has been increasingly used in education to facilitate innovative instruction. Mainland Chinese people could not use popular social media platforms such as FacebookTM because the government blocked them. Little research studied social media use by Mainland Chinese students and teachers in the isolated network environment. This quantitative study utilized social constructivism, connectivism, and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT2) as the theoretical base. Research questions explored the influence of 6 UTAUT2 predictors on social media use intention and the influence of social media use intention on social media use behavior. The study used a convenience sample of 197 undergraduate students and 54 full-time faculty from 2 public science and technology universities in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, Mainland China. Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, simple regression, multiple regression, and moderation analysis. The findings showed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, and habit significantly influenced social media use intention, and social media use intention significantly influenced social media use behavior. Age moderated the relationship between facilitating conditions and social media use intention, and gender moderated the relationship between habit and social media use intention. The findings might be used to promote positive social change by providing insights of social media use by Chinese students and teachers for university administrators, government, and social media platform designers. Better understanding might facilitate adoption of social media in education and therefore improve teaching and learning for Mainland Chinese students.

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