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Students in the 21st century are growing up constantly connected to the world around them through smart phones, tablets, and computers. The European Commission has adopted a Digital Education Action Plan (DEAP, 2018) which includes 11 initiatives to support technology-use and digital competence development in education. According to the Digital Economy and Social Index (DESI, 2018) there is an urgent need to boost digital competences in Europe and to improve the uptake of technologies in education because 37% of the EU workforce has low digital skills (or none at all), less than half of students are in schools which are highly equipped digitally and only 20-25% of them are taught by teachers who are confident using technology in the classroom. In order to meet the unique learning needs of digital natives, teachers need to move away from traditional teaching methods that are disconnected from the way students learn today (Morgan, 2014; Aviles & Eastman, 2012). Students from the digital age thrive on creative and engaging activities, varied sources of information, and a more energetic environment. Teachers are faced with the challenge to understand how they learn, how they communicate and interact with the world in order to meet the needs of today’s students and to teach more effectively.
Nowadays social networking is becoming a more and more powerful tool for communication, sharing of information and discussions on various topics. According to a worldwide survey, approximately 2 billion web surfers are using social networks today (Statista, 2018). The wide academic and research interest in the use of social networking for educational purposes in higher education is the natural result of the constantly growing popularity of social networking. In recent years there has been extensive academic and research interest in the use of social networking for educational purposes (Acharya, Patel & Jethava, 2013; Voorn & Kommers, 2013; Wang, Woo, Quek, Yang & Liu, 2011; Kropf, 2013; Arquero & Romero-Frías, 2013; Alam, 2018; Carapina, Bjelobrk & Duk, 2013; Ghanem, El-Gafy & Abdelrazig, 2014; Doneva & Gaftandzhieva, 2017; Abu-Shanab & Al-Tarawneh, 2015; edWeb, 2009; Faculty Focus, 2011) and the presentation of higher education institutions on social networks (Golubić & Lasić-Lazić, 2012; Golubić, 2017).
According to UK company Pearson (Seaman & Tinti-Kane, 2011), a learning company that promotes the effective use of technology, “A majority of faculty now use social media in a professional context (any aspect of their profession outside of teaching). Use of social media for teaching purposes has lagged even more, but like the other patterns of use, it has increased every year. The number of faculty who use social media in the classroom still does not represent a majority, but teaching use continues its steady year-to-year growth. Faculties are sophisticated consumers of social media. In general, they see considerable potential in the application of social media and technology to their teaching, but not without a number of serious barriers”.