International Journal of Information Processing and Communication (IJIPC) Vol. 7 No. 1 [May, 2019], pp. 10-18 Online: ISSN 2645-2960; Print ISSN: 2141-3959 10 Use of WhatsApp as a Learning Tool in Today’s Generation: A study of Undergraduate students. Musa Bara’u Gamji and Jinaidu Habiba Salman Department of Mass Communication, Faculty of Social, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Email: bmgamji@gmail.com; mbgamji@abu.edu.ngand hbbjunaid016@gmail.com Abstract This research is about the role of WhatsApp in enhancing students’ academic performers with the aim of establishing the acceptability and usage of WhatsApp as an important tool of learning using 300 and 400 level students of mass communication, ABU Zaria as an area of study. Specifically, the study explores the level of their WhatsApp use, correlation between WhatsApp use and academic performance as well as knowing if they share material via the application. The researcher made use of Connectivism and Uses and gratification theories as a justification for the research work. To address the issue of the research, survey method was employed by administering 200 copies of questionnaire to the participants who were selected via simple random sampling technique. Findings from the research reveal that students of Mass communication undergraduates use WhatsApp on a medium level. It also shows that they utilize the application to share material among themselves and finally it reveals that there is correlation between academic performance and the use of WhatsApp. However, the correlation was neither positive nor negative. The researchers recommend that students should try as much as possible to utilize the application to assist their academic and not to be an agent of distraction. Key Words: WhatsApp, Learning, Social Media, Students, academic activities 1. Introduction Communication is the bedrock of every development in the society, there can never be a society without communication. The advancement of technology has turned the world to a global village which makes communication among students, accessibility to educational materials and sharing of such materials very easy. Obviously for years the introduction of short messages application has transformed the way people communicate with their love ones, in which the use of mobile instant messaging applications have added significant push Such as WhatsApp which allows its users to send messages to friends and well-wishers. Of course, the emergence of new media impacted human life which the use of WhatsApp application on education carries a positive impact in academics as a learning tool. However, the increase in the use of smartphones among student and coupled with the availability of internet and instant messaging tools, students have been utilizing this opportunity to learn and share learning materials online using the WhatsApp application as a channel. Indeed, this application is a free download messenger which uses internet to send instant multimedia messages made available in almost all Smartphone. In other to use this application, the user needs to have internet connection as well as the application downloaded on the Smartphone. The application was found by the former employees of Yahoo! Brain Acton and Jan Koum in 2009 and now acquired by facebook. The application started with few people which swelled to 250,000 users in few months and now has over 700 million users which is currently the biggest online messenger application (Bouhnik & Deshen, 2014).