Adoption of social media by Business Education students: Application of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

The new generation of students, especially Business Education students are undoubtedly net savvy. Their attendance in the regular classes may be less than hundred percent, but these students browse the net on multiple occasions on a single day! Especially Social networking sites are the most favored locations among the students. There are diverse opinions of the educationists on this trend. On one extreme, they say that social networking sites like Face Book and Twitter cause distractions and hence should be blocked on the campus networks. At the other extreme there is a belief that, this new communication platform can be used to facilitate superior education. In between these two extremes, there are many who are slightly pessimistic to cautiously optimistic. The research paper tries to add to the theoretical knowledge base pertaining to adoption of newer technology of Social Networking amongst the business students at NITIE, Mumbai (a premier MBA level B School in India), by applying Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). An empirical study was carried out using on-line survey research amongst 145 students of MBA. The major findings of the paper pertain to the relationship of independent variables (Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness), Intervening Variable (Attitude) on Dependent Variable (Intention to Use). It is believed that the findings will be useful in understanding adoption phenomena better, so as to help the champions of ICT in education to take superior decisions based on them.