UTILIZATION OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS BY LIBRARIANS FOR E-LEARNING DURING LOCKDOWN PERIOD

Cyprainmary Chukwudebelu Chivuzo, Mary Chimezie Ejeabukwa, Friday Iheka Udensi

Abstract


With the report of the outbreak of Corona Virus in December in 2019, various countries have placed lockdown on major sectors of the economy, the educational sector inclusive. This lockdown was seen as part governments’ effort in battling the pandemic and curtail the spread of Covid-19. However, this has affected learning and academic activities of schools and as well exposed the deficiencies of most educational institutions in providing online educational services and e-learning plans to their students. Fortunately, this lockdown has placed an opportunity for librarians who are academic staff in tertiary institutions to implement the use of social media tools such as Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Podcasts, Flickr and blogs, Instant Messaging (IM), Rich Site Summary (RSS), Library thing, Ning, Zoom, GoogleMeet etc. for e-learning. Therefore, this paper discusses social media tools for e-learning; e-resources that can be utilized for e-learning during lockdown period; utilization of social media tools by librarians for e-learning during lockdown period; challenges of librarians in utilizing social media for e-learning during lockdown period; and prospect for effective utilization of social media for e-learning by librarians during lockdown period. The paper concluded that social media tools in this lockdown period have served as a reliable platform for e-learning and information sharing. Recommendations were that the librarian needs to be provided with further training on awareness, knowledge, and interaction with social media tools and e-learning resources as tools for teaching and learning 


Keywords


Utilization, Librarian, Social media tools, e-learning, Lockdown period

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