Social and Electronic Media as Correlates of Observational Learning among Junior Secondary School Students in Rivers State (Published)
The study investigated social and electronic media as correlates of observational learning among junior public secondary school students in Rivers State. Four research questions with corresponding null hypotheses guided the study. A correlational research design was used. The population of the study comprised all the 97,570 junior secondary school students in the 282 public secondary schools in the 23 L.G.As in Rivers State. The sample size was 2948 students. A simple random sampling technique using 20% of the 23 L.G.As gave 5 L.G.As 55 schools. The 55 schools have 7,374 students. The 40% of 7,374 students gave the sample size of 2,948 students. Four self designed instruments titled Whatsapp Use Scale (WUS), Facebook Use Scale (FUS), Television Use Scale (TUS), Radio Station Use Scale (RSUS) and Observational Learning Scale (OLS) were used for data collection. The instrument has two parts. Part A consists of the demographic factors while part B contains non cognitive and non standardized 50 items. WUS, FUS, TUS, RSUS and OLS have 10 items each. Face and content validities were ensured. The Cronbach alpha was used to establish internal consistency reliability of 0.89 for WUS, 0.81 for TUS, 0.78 for RSUS and 0.92 for OLS respectively. Pearson Product Moment Correlation was used to answer the research questions while the hypotheses were subjected to critical probability level of 0.05 alpha level. It was recommended among others that students should make adequate use of facebook applications to model after worthwhile behaviours and activities posted on the platform instead of for frivolities, Conferences should be held for the teachers/students by IT specialists on how to make effective use of whatsapp application through the download of educational events in order to achieve learning objectives
Keywords: Facebook, Radio and and Observational Learning, Television, WhatsApp