Social media use in higher education: building a structural equation model for student satisfaction and performance

Social media utilization at the student-level has become more prevalent contemporary higher education. Hence, this study is aimed at developing a specific model, along with the behavioral intention to use, to explore educational quality, actual social media use, and task-technology fit that affects student satisfaction and performance impact through examining the synergies of constructivism, user acceptance and usage of information technology, and technology acceptance. To test, a survey was administered to 430 students across five Malaysian universities. Through structural equation modeling, findings indicate that to improve student satisfaction and student performance through embedded social media, students need to have opportunities to collaborate on learning, have easy access to social media, perceive such use to be easy, and have aligned expectation on performance and effort. Interestingly, the actual social media use, was the only variable in the model that did not predict student satisfaction, despite its role in predicting student performance. The study highlights that constructivist learning, as well as task-technology fit over social media, enhances the students' learning experience and enables knowledge sharing and dissemination. The effect of using social media on student satisfaction and academic performance highlights that all students think that it is adequate for their instructors to improve their usage of social media tools. Therefore, we advocate learners and students employing social media for academic purposes with the help of lecturers at higher teaching organizations and institutions.