ABSTRACT


The Social Networking throughout the world has gained much importance and this is mainly due to the presence of the Information communications Technology (ICT). The social networking sites (SNS) introduction has led to the vast usage of the Personal computer (PCs), tablets, laptops, etc. Today's students are heavily utilizing internet technologies in their daily lives. Therefore in education, it is also necessary that, these students should also use internet technologies in order to enhance their learning. Social Network Sites (SNS) are also being used for academic purposes. At present there are many sites for social networking like Linkedln, Facebook, Google+ twitter, Instagram flickr etc. The literature indicates that among many social networking sites, Facebook has been the research focus as compared to other social networking sites and such studies have not been conducted on Google+ So there is a need to study the impact of Google+ for the educational purpose, as this social networking site is nowadays gaining more attention. The focus of this study was on a particular social networking tool i.e Google+ The main goal was to know the perceptions of the students for adopting Google+ for the educational purpose whether they accept the Google+ technology for the educational purpose or not. The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) has been used to know the acceptance of Google+ technology for the academic purpose. Data for this study was collected by the means of a TAM survey based questionnaire. The study was conducted with the sample of (n=208) undergraduate and postgraduate students at the QUEST University Nawabshah. According to the survey results, overall the Google+ is found to be useful in education for learning , use of Google+ is easy, clear and understandable, it can be used to improve the quality of tasks/assignments.

Keywords: Social Networking Sites (SNS), Information Communications Technology (ICT), Google+ , Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)