MEASURING THE EXTENT OF SOCIAL MEDIA INTEGRATION IN COLLEGE TEACHING: A STRUCTURED OBSERVATIONAL STUDY ACROSS TWO PRIVATE COLLEGES IN KARACHI

Abstract

While teachers' self-reported beliefs about social media in education have been studied qualitatively, comparatively little research has objectively measured the extent to which those beliefs translate into observable classroom practice. This study addressed that gap by developing and administering a structured classroom observation tool to quantify the level of social media integration among ten teachers (five per college) across two private colleges in Karachi, Pakistan. The 22-item tool, derived from prior qualitative findings and organized around six dimensions — sharing and access to information, engagement, communication, transparency and reputation, presence, and relationship — was content-validated by five experts using content validity indices and piloted with three teachers at a third college. Each teacher was observed twice; the two observation scores per item were combined using a five-level integration criterion ranging from No Integration to Optimal Integration. Internal consistency was acceptable to strong for four of the six dimensions (Cronbach's α = .74–.82) and below the conventional threshold for two dimensions (Transparency and Reputation, α = .49; Presence, α = .77 overall but .33 at College 2), with an overall scale reliability of α = .818 across 22 items. Descriptive analysis of frequencies and percentages revealed markedly uneven integration across dimensions: practices were most consistently observed for Sharing and Access to Information, Engagement, and Communication, while Presence and, especially, Relationship-building practices were rare or entirely absent, particularly at College 1. College 2 teachers showed consistently higher observed integration in four of six dimensions, while College 1 showed marginally higher Presence-related practice. No inferential statistical tests were computed; comparisons are descriptive. Findings suggest that college-level social media integration in this context is concentrated in informational and communicative functions rather than relational or identity-oriented ones, with implications for targeted professional development and future comparative research using formal significance testing.