The Use of Telegram for Academic Activities among University Physics Education Students in North-Central Nigeria Prospects and Challenges

The use of technology is already becoming inevitable, as it has become another way of approaching academic activities both at secondary school level and tertiary institutions. telegram is one the currently trending social media which has found its way into the hearts of young academicians because of its many exciting features. This informs the researchers interest to study the use of telegram for academic activities among university physics education students in North-Central Nigeria prospects and challenges. Two research questions guided the study. The study adopted descriptive survey method, using questionnaire to obtain responses from 500 randomly sampled respondents from five universities offering physics education in the North-central Nigeria. Questionnaire, titled “Prospects and Challenges of Using Telegram for Academic Activities” (PCUTAA) was used as instrument for data collection from the university lecturers. The instrument was validated and test for reliability was conducted using Cronbach Alpha Coefficient with an index of 0.85. Mean and Standard Deviation was used to analyze the data obtained from the respondents while hypotheses were tested with t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The findings revealed that, the use of Telegram for academic activities is very effective and therefore has a high prospect of being adopted and useful for academic activities. The study also revealed that, power supply, bad network during use, cost of data are the major challenges confronting its use. Based on the findings, it was recommended that lecturers should adopt the use of Telegram for academic activities and good network facilities should be installed on campuses to facilitate its use.