Acceptance of Social Media for Study Purposes—A Longitudinal Case Study

Abstract

Background: Social media is a ubiquitous phenomenon that serves as a tool for communication, collaboration, and creativity. In the long term, it has an indispensable place in the field of education. The research paper discusses the use of certain social networking sites where learning management systems are extensively and consistently used in the teaching and learning process at universities. The rapid transition to online platforms had a tremendous impact on the educational process, exposing and promoting the effectiveness of heutagogy. The circumstances made it necessary to emphasize the value of self-directed learning and the capacity to identify educational requirements and strategies for reaching study objectives. This kind of research corresponds to the increased need to develop desired self-study skills in students. Objectives: The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how undergraduate students perceive the trends in acceptance and the degree of appropriateness of social media for academic purposes. Methods: Research on social media use in education was inspired by a review of the literature. The purpose of the questionnaire is to track awareness, use, general satisfaction, communication, testing, and revision. The set of social media examined in the survey (years 2021 and 2022) was modified to reflect the social media landscape at the time. This study compares the findings of four different studies. The outcomes are displayed in graphs. Results: Two areas are analyzed: social media as a means of communication in the process of education and social media as a tool enabling students’ revision and testing of study materials. The first two studies, which were conducted in 2014 and 2019, are based on the same set of examined social media and fit the comparison, enabling to define the trend in students’ perceived satisfaction with social media for study purposes. The third and fourth studies discussed in this paper were run during the winter semesters of 2021 and 2022. Conclusions: The most significant differences between 2021 and 2022 can be seen in Instagram, Twitch, and other platforms, where a substantial drop in satisfaction in the communication field can be seen. The biggest difference in revision and testing is found in Facebook, Twitch, and Teams, which are abandoning online teaching and learning after the COVID-19 event. Social media use for studying has significantly decreased, with noteworthy decreases in Wiki, Facebook, and video calls.

1. Introduction

Social media is a subset of Web 2.0 that focuses on user-generated content and social interaction on the web. With Web 2.0 on the scene, soon came implications for education [1,2]. The implications introduced new approaches and forms in the process of education. Analogous to Web 2.0, the concept of Education 2.0 emerged [3]. The use of social media in the educational process has been associated with high expectations from the beginning and has been seen as having considerable potential [4,5]. At the same time, researchers have been aware of the challenges and pitfalls [6,7].

Since the turn of the millennium, the blended learning concept of education has been ingrained in faculty policy as one of the most promising educational techniques at the Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Králové. The paper discusses long-term research conducted at this faculty on the use of selected social media for both general everyday use and for study purposes. The set of selected applications in the research was characterized by initially having a number of distinctive missions. These missions have evolved over time as the platforms have grown and changed. In the aspect of their defining uniqueness, they have slightly faded, and most of them have become multi-layered, fulfilling multiple roles. A learning management system is one of the examined applications that still maintains its firm position and is the focus of the study. The WebCT learning management system (LMS), now called Blackboard LMS, performs a comprehensive and reliable function in the teaching and learning process in the university environment.

The distinction between social networks and social media is not discussed in the Czech context when it comes to the definition of the term “social media,” neither at the official level such as reports of the Czech Statistical Office [8] nor on professional media websites such as Mediaguru [9] and Sítě v hrsti/Networks in a nutshell [10]. According to the Czech Statistical Office [8], Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are mostly used for marketing, conversation, and the sharing of information. These are significant global forums for communication. The Czech information and education website provides the following thorough description of the term social network: “Social network is a virtual area where registered people connect, exchange information, images, and videos, and where other functions are enabled [10].

In contrast, the labels “social network” and “social media” are differentiated in the English-speaking world. A computer technology used to distribute information by building virtual communities and networks is known as social media. These networks, relations, and connections are social networks. The Internet’s social media platforms allow for quick electronic contact and content exchange among users. Documents, private information, papers, films, and images can all be considered content. Using social networks on a computer, tablet, or smartphone [11]. Zgheib and Dabbagh [12] define social media as a set of Internet-based applications and highlight Web 2.0 features that enable the creation and exchange of user-generated content.

Since the beginning of our research on the utilization of social media in a university setting in 2014 [13], we have been working with the definition that social media are tools and social networks are links between people that can extend beyond the digital space. The expectations, challenges, and potential of social media in education dominated research in the first decade of the twenty-first century [2,3,4]. In the second decade of the 21st century, this approach to understanding social media in education has grown to include theories in which researchers concentrated on particular groups using particular social media. For example, research is profiling and focusing on the benefits of collaborative learning [14], formal and informal learning [15,16], motivation [17], and creativity [18]. Monitoring user satisfaction—in this case, student satisfaction—with the use of social media in education is crucial to the success of our research. Rahman et al. [19] examine higher education students’ perceptions of social media use and its impact on their satisfaction. They conclude that while perceived risk discourages the use of social media, the perceived usefulness of social media has a positive impact.

Our research fills a research gap and develops an extensive conceptual framework for social media use in education. It can also be adjusted to fit different research requirements, such as those related to formal and informal education or student involvement in online content creation. The longitudinal study enables us to track usage changes, detect trends that might occur over a period of time, and consequently concentrate on future research.

This study is a contribution to the turbulent research on the use of social media in the teaching/learning process. There are three main research learning areas in the complex long-term study: social media as a communication tool, social media as a source of study material, and social media as a tool for revising and testing. The focus is on the use, satisfaction, and potential of social media for studying in a university setting in the three main learning areas [20,21,22,23]. Due to notable changes brought by the global phenomenon, affecting all areas of our lives, including the educational sphere, the research presented here conducted at the Faculty of Informatics and Management, University of Hradec Králové, had to be redesigned within the specific university research project “ICT as Support Tool for Cognitive Processes” (SPEV 2021) SPEV 2022 [24] to reflect the current unexperienced situation. The study follows the faculty’s stated plan for its research. It examines how social media is used in the university context, with an emphasis on communicating and reviewing previously learned information.

The goal of the paper is to show the acceptance and level of appropriateness of social media for communication and revision in the process of education as perceived by students.

Focusing on communication and testing will help students build the self-learning autonomy that social media encourages and facilitates.

The first subgoal of the study is to determine how students’ use of social media for study purposes has changed as a result of the transition from traditional classroom settings to online learning environments.

The second subgoal of this paper is to determine whether, from the perspective of students, social media awareness and the resulting perceived degree of satisfaction with them as a communication medium utilized for academic purposes as well as a way to review and test academic content have changed over time.

In order to more accurately reflect the situation on a local level and show the trend in the usage of social media and students’ perceptions of it, we present the most recent data that was acquired in conjunction with the earlier research.

The structure of the paper follows a standard pattern: Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion.

2. Materials and Methods

University students are the target population for which we want to draw generalizations because they are supposed to do an extensive amount of self-studying and are generally expected to be more interested in their field of study. Given that it is the subject of a study’s question, the use of social media in a university setting serves as the response variable.

The research strategy is based on students’ perspectives and perceptions of the educational process. Repeatedly conducted literature reviews on the topic of emerging social media in education were used as a source of up-to-date information on the subject, where studies on collaboration predominated (summary in Section 4). In terms of the theoretical and practical aspects of implementing social media, the literature review served as a source of professional inspiration in the academic environment. It served as the basis for the conceptual framework of our study on the use of social media in education in a broad sense, including as a resource for learning materials, a tool for revision, and a platform for collaboration.

Based on the research studies and articles reviewed, the questionnaire’s design was developed as the primary research tool to include the desired areas of inquiry. The number of social media monitored was slightly altered. The areas that were consistently monitored were: awareness, use for study purposes, general satisfaction with each social media, and satisfaction with each social media in the defined areas, which are study materials, communication, and revision and testing.

In our study, we concentrated on defining differences in collected data from compared studies. The stated research questions follow:

• Will students continue the trend of developing a more pronounced/polarized view of the researched media?
• Will satisfaction differ between 2021 and 2022?
• Will satisfaction with the newly included media be higher in the current year?
• Will there be differences in media usage in the current year?

2.1. Participants

There were 71 students who participated in the research in 2014 and 74 students who participated in the research in 2019. Five years was deemed to be a long enough period to detect a trend. The third survey from 2021 was chosen because it contains the most recent information regarding the pandemic’s experience. A total of 67 students participated in a survey in 2021. There were 54 students in the most recent survey, conducted in 2022 after COVID-19 measures had been reduced. All of the students, who ranged in age from 19 to 21, were enrolled in Professional English, a required language course, and were in their second year of a full-time bachelor’s degree program at the Faculty of Informatics and Management.

2.2. Data Collection Instruments and Procedures

Every year, the social media usage survey is used as part of a particular academic research project. Techniques for collecting data with both quantitative and qualitative elements were used. The main survey tool, a social media questionnaire on awareness, use, and satisfaction with a selection of social media, shows how students assess the suitability of these platforms for learning. Several distribution and collection techniques have been employed throughout the longitudinal study, including paper copies in the classroom, Word documents, and online tools. In the most recent research in 2022, a link to an online survey created in Google Forms was used to distribute the questionnaire in the Blackboard LMS.

2.3. Data Analysis Techniques

One of the primary research instruments used in all iterations of the extensive study on students’ use of social media in a university context has been a questionnaire. Data from four surveys that were gathered in 2014, 2019, 2021, and 2022 were compared and analyzed in this study for certain research topics.

The core of the questionnaire on the utilization of social media consists of the following parts: awareness and utilization, satisfaction, and perceived potential. The set of social applications researched in 2014 and 2019 included: Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Other nets—can you write (e.g., LinkedIn, MySpace) surveys, YouTube, Skype, ICQ, Blog, PBWiki (PBWorks), Social bookmarking, Sharing Photos, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Other Internet PC games, WebCT, Moodle, and Other LMS (learning management system). The updated set of applications from 2021 and 2022 included: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Wiki, Teams, WhatsApp, Video Calls, Blackboard LMS, and others, where students could choose platforms according to their preferences. The section on awareness and utilization of social media consists of two parts: general and specialized. In the general part, students state whether or not they are familiar with social media and how frequently they use it. In the specialized part, they mark the social media they use in formal education and in further education. The satisfaction section has likewise two parts: general and specialized on education. Firstly, students rate individual social media from the perspective of general use, applying a scale 1–5, where 1 = the best, 5 = the worst, or the mark N = I don’t use. Then they rate individual media for learning needs in terms of their suitability for communication, reservoir of learning materials, testing, and revision. In this paper, we analyze responses to the questions related to communication, revision, and testing from the questionnaire regarding the use of social networks. A Likert scale is used to evaluate the suitability of each application for the study areas.

For all surveys, the questionnaires were processed in MS Excel; in previous years, it was a manual transcription of completed questionnaires; this year, the import tool in Google Forms was used. In Excel, we then calculated the frequencies of the surveyed responses, supplemented them with the results from previous surveys, and created the corresponding graphs.

3. Results

Bar graphs that display the frequency of the various answers are used to demonstrate the findings of the quantitative section of the questionnaire. Each variable under investigation has two graphs accessible (communication; revision and testing). The first graph displays a comparison with prior years tracked in significant social media; the second likewise provides the most current social media examinations, but just for the years 2021 and 2022.

This chapter provides a clear and comprehensive overview of the findings of the research. The summary of any patterns or trends observed in the data, as well as any unexpected or surprising findings, is placed in the Section 4.

3.1. Communication

The LMS is where the biggest changes since 2014 can be seen. Only 14% of respondents used it for communication in the first year of research; by 2019, that number had increased to 70%. Ninety percent of respondents used it in 2021, and twenty-three percent of respondents thought it was very good or better. The level of satisfaction has more than doubled compared to previous years.

A growing dissatisfaction could be found in Wiki and YouTube, which are social media that are not primarily used for communication. With VideoCall, a higher usage rate has been seen. A higher percentage of respondents rate this social media as very satisfying, demonstrating the 18% growth between 2019 and 2021. Facebook is seeing both a drop in usage and a drop in user satisfaction. The following results were obtained by returning to the well-established blended-learning teaching paradigm. The number of video calls significantly declined in 2022, and users became happier with YouTube and LMS. It is possible to see a decrease in the use of all networks, except for the LMS. Such a low level of utilization of social media was not even at the beginning of the systematically conducted research in 2014. This can be attributed to the fact that students are no longer as inclined to use tools that are not directly intended for the teaching/learning process. Another aspect may also be that teachers are now able to work with LMS at a higher level and use them more, so students do not have as much need to use resources other than the LMS (see Figure 1).

Figure 2 illustrates the data gained from the last surveys conducted in 2021 and 2022 with a slightly updated set of social media. It is obvious that the Teams application clearly led in communication in 2021 and even in 2022 when utilization of the Teams platform shifted to a voluntary basis. Only 1.5% of students gave it a rating of not so good or bad, and 86% of students gave it a rating of very good or better. Twitch, the second new entrant, had a poor rating from students, which is understandable given that this platform is primarily meant for sharing content and, secondarily, as a communication platform. In comparison, 2022 sees a significant downward trend in the use of all apps. The biggest drop is for Twitch and others (only a sixth of the students said they use other than the listed applications, mainly Duolingo and Telegram).

3.2. Revision and Testing

See Figure 3 and Figure 4 for evidence of the learning management system (LMS) being used significantly more for testing and revision. The percentage of users who reported very good or better satisfaction reached 55% in 2019 when there was a noticeable increase in use. Twenty-five percent of students continued to not use an LMS, though. Ninety-eight percent of students used LMS in 2021, and 88% of them were pleased with it as a tool for review and testing. The rating was the lowest on Facebook; it was also the least used and had the lowest satisfaction. Just 4% of students reported being satisfied. Another notable change may be seen in video calls, where satisfaction increased from 3% to 10% from 2019 to 2014 and from 10% to 41% from 2019 to 2021. Similar trends to those in communication can be seen here for the year 2022. For instance, with Facebook, the percentage of respondents who use it for revision and testing dropped below 40%, which is the lowest for the entire period of the challenge, showing that students are stricter when evaluating all social networks and that their use is also significantly lower. Similar statistics apply to Wiki, whose usage rate of 44% is also the lowest ever. Surprisingly, only 21% of calls are made using video, which is the lowest percentage ever. This represents a 50-percentage point drop from the prior year. It is clear that students this year avoid using social media sites rather than giving them the lowest possible grade.

The significant role of Teams is once again apparent here when viewed from the perspective of the newly added social media (see Figure 4). However, in this instance, it is the only newly added medium that has produced acceptable results. In the university setting, testing and reviewing study material for educational purposes is dominated by the LMS platform. All networks are used less now than they were in 2021, similar to how communication has changed. For instance, Twitch and Facebook show that the majority of respondents chose not to use the networks rather than award them the lowest grade.

3.3. Overview of Stated Research Questions

1.

Will students continue in the trend of developing a more pronounced/polarized view of the researched media?

The findings from the latest survey, from 2022, differ in many ways from trends seen in previous years (see Figure 5). In the field of communication, an example is YouTube, where the ratio of satisfied students has risen significantly, by tens of percent. In this case, this platform is moving away from the previous trend. However, in the case of Facebook, it can be observed that interest in this platform is declining in this area. In the area of revision and testing, the LMS can be mentioned, which is gaining popularity and has a rising rating in satisfaction. This trend continued in 2022, giving this platform the highest satisfaction rating. Overall, however, satisfaction has decreased as the proportion of students who rated the second-best possible grade has dropped significantly. In the case of Facebook, there is a complete shift away from satisfaction in this area, which is in line with trends from previous studies. In general, the most polarizing trend in satisfaction can be observed with newly included media, which cannot be compared with previous studies because they were not studied in older surveys.

2.

Will satisfaction differ between 2021 and 2022?

The biggest differences between 2021 and 2022 can be seen in Instagram, Twitch, and Other, where a big drop in satisfaction in the field of communication can be observed. In the area of revision and testing, the biggest difference is in Facebook, Twitch, and Teams. For Teams, this trend can be explained by the shift away from online learning, for which the Teams platform was widely employed following the decline of COVID-19. This research question also follows up on the previous one and shows a trend of polarization in satisfaction and use of some media (see Figure 6).

3.

Will satisfaction with the newly included media be higher in the current year?

For most newly included media, a decline in satisfaction can be observed (see Figure 7). In the area of revision and testing, these are Teams, WhatsApp, and Other; in the area of communication, all applications except WhatsApp.

4.

Will there be differences in media usage in current year?

As was mentioned in the previous questions, according to this study, the use of social media for studying has significantly decreased. Significant declines have been noticed on Wiki, Facebook, and VideoCalls. There is not a single social media platform where usage has increased; in fact, usage of some of the social media platforms was lower than it was in 2014 (e.g., Facebook, VideoCall, Wiki).

4. Discussion

Although it may sound more like a cliché, social media has a significant and determining impact on both personal and professional lives. Yet, access to the Internet and the popularity and ongoing advancement of cutting-edge technologies have revolutionized the globe [25,26].

Social media’s potential for use in education can sometimes inspire unbridled enthusiasm. A digital marketer, Shahbaz Shaikh [27], states that social media is an essential form of knowledge along with a stream of fun. He highlights the possibility given to students to convey their views via social media. Then there is the smart way to get to the desired beneficial content via, e.g., the possibility to start following a specialist in a certain field or subject. All that may foster their improvement in their performance.

Another source that believes in the limitless and irreplaceable role of social media in the educational process follows, as it claims that social media is shaping and influencing how students learn and interact today [28]. The authors highlight the feature of social media to promote self-directed learning where they refer to Blaschke’s 2014 paper on the development of self-determined learning [29].

For this resource, our review concurs with the perceived importance of social networking as a reservoir of learning materials and a medium for communication and instant interaction. Although there is a parallel with our research, the difference in their work on the role of social media as a learning tool is due, among other things, to the slightly different categorization of social media. It is difficult to come to a common consensus because each researcher approaches the research design with his or her own specific research intent, reflecting the current actual situation in situ.

The University of Arizona offers social media platforms as learning tools: Blogs, Twitter, Skype, Pinterest, Google Docs, Wikis, Project Management Apps, and LinkedIn. They start with blogs, which received minimal interest for educational purposes from students in our study. We came up with the same minimal or zero results for Twitter or Pinterest, which are suggested as the second and third suitable tools, respectively. The set of monitored social media in the here presented longitudinal study was: LMS, Wiki, VideoCall, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitch, Teams, and WhatsApp, as can be seen in the graphs in the Section 3.

ProProfs delightfully smart tools company dealing in software design offers a way to integrate social media tools into online learning via the following set of platforms: Wikis and other collaborative document tools, Twitter for class discussion, personal and class blogs, YouTube, and social bookmarking sites to curate and tag relevant content [30].

When we look at the offer, we can see how it differs from ours. Not everything is always completely relevant; we can be inspired, but it is essential to take into account the actual existing situation, e.g., our students have never shown any interest in the utilization of social bookmarking [13].

The use of social media in higher education is thoroughly and individually examined. Manca and Ranieri [31] discuss the potential of Facebook, and Chugh, R. and Ruhi, U. [32] provide a review of the literature focusing solely on Facebook. We take a thorough approach to social media research in a university setting. Celik and Schoreels [33] examine the perceptions, awareness, and worries of students and educators from various generations regarding social media and its application in the education environment, while Greenhow and Lewin [15] investigate social media as the driver of educational changes that broaden and support the role of informal learning, a concept similar to the focus of our research. Li and Kent [34] examine brand-new opportunities for mediated communication that social media has made possible.

Many new platforms are emerging where students can create their own content, such as Canva, Scalenut or Storybird educational content creation apps. In this study, we explicitly talk about content creation on the Blackboard LMS platform. The use of other platforms is tempting, but for reasons of maintaining consistency in the overall e-course design, this does not yet seem sensible.

The data in the longitudinal study can be divided into two sections: the pre-COVID-19 era, comprising data from 2014 and 2019 surveys, and the COVID-19 and post-COVID-19 era, bringing data from the winter semesters 2021 and 2022 surveys.

The COVID-19 era demonstrated the critical need for new communication platforms to be implemented, but it also highlighted the strength of dependable and stable email communication. However, the post-COVID-19 era showed flexibility in returning to the standard blended learning concept, mixing face-to-face classes with studying on the virtual platform.

We have lived through a period of turbulent change; the pandemic had an impact on the necessity of change and adaptation in the educational process. The COVID-19 crisis, a global phenomenon, has had an impact on all aspects of life, including education, and has led to significant adjustments in the move to online platforms. There are now articles that discuss the advantages of using online tools for COVID-19 and how to apply them moving to face-to-face lectures [35].

Educational authorities, teachers, practitioners, and researchers faced this unknown and strange issue and addressed it at both the technical and human levels.

We explore how social media can foster learners’ needs during their learning. A learner needs to communicate the instructions and assistance; a learner needs access to study materials; a learner needs to revise and test whether he or she has accomplished learning goals. We have designed a scheme based on the learner’s perspective—how they themselves perceive and rate social media for their study purposes.

The importance of social media has grown significantly. Multiple angles are taken into consideration when researching social media in education. Social media, according to Lori Wade’s writing [36], is changing how we educate the young generation. She focuses on the advantages that social media provides for all of the education system’s stakeholders, not just the frequently discussed teacher–student relationship [36]. According to Greenhow, C. and Lewin, C. [15], the line separating formal and informal learning is becoming increasingly hazy as a result of social media’s growing influence. The use of social media in the educational process has accelerated due to the pandemic. Reinders and Benson [37] address this issue in relation to language learning outside of formal education. Instructional pragmatic guidelines on how to incorporate social media as a component of the desired strategy for distance higher education are provided by Greenhow and Galvin [16].

Social media provides challenging tools for encouraging active participation and interaction online. Heutagogy as an important socio-pedagogical phenomenon clearly crystallizes [38]. It was accelerated by the advancement and implementation of social media. And this is the way to autonomy, where certain essentials are needed, see more Lin, L., Reinders [39]. As it is throughout our lives, communication is crucial. Students must be encouraged to communicate, given a voice, a sense of being heard, and a sense of responsibility while also being given the opportunity to pursue their own education. The significance of fostering an atmosphere of empathy and trust makes learning experiences more pervasive. As a result, it affects the learner’s behavior, which corresponds to Carl Roger’s five decades-old Human Learning Theory [40] as well as to current trends in developing self-directed learning [41].

We have been conducting research on how social media is used in education from the perspective of students for over a decade [20,21,22,23]. Semingson and Smith [42] analyze digital mentoring in an online course in a university setting from students’ perspectives using information gathered from their written reflections on videoconferencing. They also pay attention to how students perceive the experience. The primary method used in Lam et al.’s research on blended learning [43] and Cheung’s research on students’ perceptions of the value of open educational resources is the perspective of the students [44,45].

Our findings do not correspond with those in [46] or [47] systematic reviews. Muca et al. [47] present findings on online educational resources and media device use for educational purposes. They identified six studies conducted in veterinary education within 5 years that were eligible for the mini meta-analysis. In spite of the fact that social media was widely used for leisure as a platform for sharing information, the use for study purposes was low. Similar results were obtained from the systematic review and meta-analysis conducted in medical education. Guraya, S.Y. [46] show that only one fifth of medical students used social media sites for educational purposes.

Future Research

The use of social media and other online platforms in university education is viewed from a range of perspectives. The use of these platforms is viewed by some as an effective way to offer students access to data and resources that they would not otherwise have. Several experts are concerned that the use of social media and online platforms will result in a drop in educational quality and a decline in teacher-student interaction.

We must be wary of generalizing the findings; each area is specific, even though it is broadly defined as an area of education in a university setting. It is crucial to understand that each school and even each study field has unique requirements and objectives, and the optimal use of these technologies may differ.

It can be observed that the habits and attitudes of this generation are different from previous surveys. Therefore, it would be desirable to consider the option of more extensive research with a larger number of students, which would confirm or refute this impression. Previous surveys were consistent with the first survey, namely the growing interest in social networks. For that reason, smaller groups were sufficient to verify the continuation of the set trend. However, this research shows a considerable deviation from the previous results. It would therefore be appropriate to find out whether it is a deviation or whether a different-minded generation is really coming—this needs to be investigated on a larger sample.

5. Conclusions

Social media has a big effect on people’s personal and professional lives. LMS, Wiki, VideoCall, YouTube, and Facebook, as well as the more recent additions of Instagram, Twitch, Teams, and WhatsApp, were among the social media platforms that the longitudinal study monitored. In-depth and individual analyses of social media usage in academic settings are conducted. The effectiveness of email communication during the pandemic was shown in previous research, as was the need for new communication channels. The post-COVID-19 era showed flexibility by returning to the traditional blended learning model, which combines in-person instruction with online study. Educational leaders, teachers, practitioners, and researchers addressed the issue on both the technical and human levels. Heutagogy could be the path to autonomy in education, which is now possible thanks to social media.

For students to be motivated to communicate, given a voice, and given responsibility, interaction is crucial. The perceptions of students towards open educational resources, blended learning, and digital mentoring have been the subject of research.

From our research, it can be seen that students’ needs are changing at an ever-increasing rate, and therefore it is necessary to continuously conduct various satisfaction surveys and get feedback from students. After all, learning materials and supports are designed for students, so they should reflect the habits of the current generation. Moreover, it is hard to imagine what the wild and unbridled development of artificial intelligence will bring us since its research is focusing mainly on the components of intelligence such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and language use.