M-learning: Appropriating Social Media for Pedagogy in Kenya

Abstract

Innovations pay off for teacher’ is a story of a Kenyan High school teacher, who decided to be innovative in teaching. In his words, he says, ‘I realised that the student-centred training had more potential and so I integrated it with ICT’ (Daily Nation, Monday 3, 2017). The 36-year-old, Paul Thairu, a physics and math teacher, uses his smartphone to shoot videos, take photos and uses them to make students grasp concepts. He reported that ever since he started using this innovative methodology, students had become more interested in learning and performance had been better. This is a good example of how smartphones applications can be used to promote learning. The popularity and growth of social media especially among teens and young adults have equally found increased adoption in institutions of higher learning, ushering in the potential for its use by students, who have an insatiable quest for new knowledge. The COVID-19 pandemic engendered lockdowns and subsequent changes in teaching methodology. Kenyan university lecturers, like others, had to make abrupt changes to ensure that learning continued amidst the pandemic dictates. Although many teachers used smartphones to continue teaching, there is scant empirical documentation available. This study examined the use of social media by higher education (HE) teachers for pedagogy. Drawing from literature and interviews among select university lecturers in Kenya, the study finds WhatsApp and Facebook the most widely used social media for pedagogy and affirms that social media platforms are useful as both planning and teaching tools in institutions of higher learning.