Los medios sociales como herramienta de acceso a la información en la enseñanza

Social Media use in academic environments as a tool to access information and knowledge by students is becoming more common. Z generation mastery of these tools allows their implementation both in their daily life and in learning processes and routines. This paper aims to discover which social media tools -including Learning Management Systems offered by the university- are being used by students to access information and knowledge, an objective that is fixed describing the most common activities destined to accomplish this purpose: finding notes and papers, searching information to complete assignments, solving content questions with professors, solving doubts with other classmates, ask for class notes to other students or compare their papers with others' assignments. To this end, a survey was conducted to a representative sample formed by 231 university students from Communication Sciencies Faculty of Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC), together with two in-depth interviews with explorative purposes. Results obtained show a clear preponderance of two tools: e-mail and Whatsapp, and a limited use of Learning Management Systems -moodle. This lack of scope suggests that universities should rethink their strategies in this area.