Using Social Media as a Tool for Improving Academic Performance through Collaborative Learning in Malaysian Higher Education

Nowadays, many higher education institutions are still depending on the traditionally-based learning management systems that actually do not use full capabilities of social media in engaging researchers in collaborative learning. Due to recent rise in social media usage, especially among researchers and lecturers of educational institutions, a great deal of research was conducted to explore how to take advantage of social media and use it to improve the researchers ‘academic performance through collaborative learning. To achieve this objective, it is important to explore the actual relationship between two variables: social media and academic performance. This study is aimed at examining the relationship between using social media and improving academic performance. A survey was conducted among the research students of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and 323 valid responses were received. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the relationship between three constructs: social media, collaborative learning, and academic performance. The results showed a significant effect of social media on the students’ academic performance with collaborative learning as the mediating variable. Without good collaborative learning, an education institution cannot take advantage of social media for improving academic performance.