Impact of Whatsapp on literacy
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Impact of Whatsapp on literacy
Introduction
A mobile application called Whatsapp has widely gained popularity as one of the modern means of communication. Many people today are gaining access to smartphones. With smartphones, Whatsapp is becoming a widespread application in gadgets. The most significant benefit of this application is cost-free in downloading. It is also faster in communication. Besides, it has attracted users from all cadre of life. Due to its popularity even in students, it would be interesting to examine the effects it has on promoting literacy among the students and people.
Background of Whatsapp and literacy
Recently, instant applications for messaging have evolved. They have been classified into mobile-based social media networks and have attracted immense popularity. Despite the existence of many instant messaging apps that operate via mobile devices, the Whatsapp application seems to be more preferred (Similar Web, 2016, and Statista, 2016). Oliveria and church (2013) pointed out that the Whatsapp mobile application has rapidly become popular because of the underlying advantages, which include privacy, low cost, timely texting groups, and individuals simultaneously.
Smit (2012) explained that messaging is usable in education. In his study, it was observed that the use of applications could increase learning. They promote the activeness of the learners while in their studies.
Cifuente and Lents (2010) also noted that students could interact through the use of mobile-based social media. The interaction is students to students, school, and students as well as related courses. This has promoted the exchange of ideas and has generally improved educational communication, which has enhanced learning.
A study conducted by Johnson (2014) on the use of Whatsapp among students in tertiary institutions based in Ghana observed that the application breaks social and communication barriers among the students and the institution, which promotes learning. The study points out that there is more comfortable and faster communication among the students. This enhances the quicker and effective sharing of information and other learning resources, adding a positive impact on students learning. Nguyen and Fussel (2016) pointed out that the Whatsapp application is an essential tool to use in all scopes of learning.it can be applied all times in any place via collaborative learning. With such an environment of communication, sharing information, and the ideas, learning is promoted.
The methodology of this research
The use of a questionnaire will collect the information. This will enhance the collection of qualitative data. The surveys will be distributed to students, school departments, and also the tutors. Furthermore, data will be collected from secondary sources. The pretest-post control cluster or quasi-experimental system will also be used in collecting data. This will provide the quantitative aspect of data. The quasi-experimental design of data collection has been observed to be the best method to obtain information that can help in explaining the cause-effect relationship between variables. After the pretest, there is treatment. Then posttest is administered to determine the effect on the dependent variable (Wallen and Fraenkel, 2016).
The study groups will also be used in this research. The respondents will be mainly university students. This is the best group because they have extensive knowledge on WhatsApp. A simple sampling method will be used to be the participants to save time during the study. Generally, it is hard to study the whole population.
References
Chaka, J. G., & Govender, I. (2017). Students’ perceptions and readiness towards mobile learning in colleges of education: a Nigerian perspective. South African Journal of Education, 37(1).
Church, K., & De Oliveira, R. (2013, August). What’s up with WhatsApp? Comparing mobile instant messaging behaviors with traditional SMS. In Proceedings of the 15th international conference on Human-computer interaction with mobile devices and services (pp. 352-361).
Fraenkel, J. R., Wallen, N. E., & Hyun, H. H. (2011). How to design and evaluate research in education. New York: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.
Lents, N. H., & Cifuentes, O. E. (2010). Increasing student-teacher interactions at an urban commuter campus through instant messaging and online office hours.
Nguyen, D. T., & Fussell, S. R. (2016). Effects of conversational involvement cues on understanding and emotions in instant messaging conversations. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 35(1), 28-55.
SimilarWeb, L. T. D. (2016). Analytics of Ararat brandy. Com website.
Smith, A. N., Fischer, E., & Yongjian, C. (2012). How does brand-related user-generated content differ across YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter?. Journal of interactive marketing, 26(2), 102-113.