The Effect of Using Instant Messaging Communication on the Teaching and Learning Experience of Students

There has been recent interest in studying the use of instant messaging (IM) as a teaching tool for supervising students’ dissertations and tutoring undergraduate students. Research studies on this topic have indicated that students are very positive about the use of IM in communicating with their tutors or supervisors. This paper aims to study the use of IM as a supplementary tool in tutoring undergraduate students. In this research, the use of IM obtained is analysed, together with the teaching and learning feedback from a traditional end-of-course teaching and learning experience questionnaire survey. Such a survey is typically conducted for most university courses to collect students’ views on the teaching and learning process for the course concerned. A correlation analysis was conducted to study the possible relationship between the use of IM and students’ experience of teaching and learning. Other associated measures, such as the tutorial attendance rate and assessment marks, are examined.