International Students’ Acceptance on using Social Networking Site to Support Learning Activities

The increasing numbers of international students studying in UCSI University necessitates research into appropriate ways to support cultural diversity in teaching and providing learning tools for them. International students usually face problems in adapting to culturally different education system and this complicates the discipline specific skills that they have come to learn. In addition to that, the number of contact hours is known to be insufficient, especially for cases of large classes of freshmen, where individual face-to-face could be a better way to bridge the cultural gap. Social networking site is known to be able to bridge the cultural gap and build trust among students and members of the faculty. It is also a platform for knowledge sharing when the students start to accept that the interaction among members within the site could support their learning activities. The question here is whether they are ready to accept social networking site as a learning tool. This paper evaluates the international students’ acceptance on using the social networking site to support their learning activities, using the UTAUT model, which postulates the constructs of performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions on using technology. These constructs determine the behavioural intent, which influences the usage behaviour of the technology. Effectiveness of social networking to support students’ learning activities in higher education is expected to be highly dependent on the acceptance of the students in various aspects, and this research reports the progress of students in accepting the emerging technology as their learning tool. A variety of lessons concerning the use of social networking site and how it can be linked to other online tools are presented, especially in terms of building trust among students across culture differences. Thoughtful consideration in planning the structure of collaboration tools is recommended, not only for providing learning environment but also in terms of assisting students in adapting to culture diversity.