Learning Management Systems Vs. Social Media for Learning in the UAE: Opportunities and Challenges

Traditional teaching and learning methods have transformed by incorporating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools, especially learning management systems (LMS). They were emphasized as essential tools in the educational system in the UAE and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media (SM) has been used more for networking purposes and less in academic settings. With the spread of the pandemic, the uses of ICT have been enhanced in distance education. And given that some countries still need to establish yet to have a well-established technical infrastructure, they have resorted to using social media to ensure the sustainability of education. This chapter explores the uses of LMS versus SM in the MENA region before and during the COVID-19 pandemic to outline the most important developments that the use of social media went through and how it was transformed from a tool for communication into a tool for teaching and learning. How do some regional universities use social media as a formal and informal way to deliver knowledge? What are the advantages of using social media for learning purposes in the region? What are its main disadvantages? This chapter further reviews the uses of social media for learning and explores opportunities and challenges. For this, a mixed method will be adopted. In the first stage, the results of two qualitative studies on the use of communication technologies as well as social media before the pandemic will be presented before delivering the results of the survey questions on the uses of social media for teaching and learning from the point of view of a sample of professors in the Middle East and North Africa region.