BOLAJI, H. O and WONUOLA, M.M. 34 Nigerian Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 1, No 1, 2019 EVALUATION OF TERTIARY INSTITUTION STUDENTS PERCEIVE INSTRUCTIONAL USEFULNESS AND REACTION TOWARDS WHATSAPP SOCIAL MEDIA APPLICATION FOR MOBILE LEARNING Bolaji H. O. Department of Science Education, Faculty of Education, Al-Hikmah University, Ilorin, Nigeria lalekanbolaji@gmail.com; hobolaji@alhikmah.edu Wonuola, M. M. Department of Mass Communication, Faculty of Humanities Al-HikmahUniversity, Ilorin, Nigeria wonuolamm@gmail.com; mmwonuola@alhikmah.edu.ng Abstract The social media application has enjoyed acceptability among students of various tertiary institutions wherein it is been engaged for instructional activities. Hence, empirical information should be harnessed to justify the integration of social media applications into education, especially WhatsApp. This study adopted a descriptive approach of survey method in which a researcher-designed questionnaire was structured to collate data on instructional usefulness and reaction towards WhatsApp social media applications. Random sampling technique was adopted for the administration of the questionnaire which was validated by five lecturers and a test-retest method was adopted and yielded 0.89 of Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Four research questions were structured and two hypotheses were raised. Frequency counts and percentages were used to answer research questions one and two while t-test was used to analyze the hypotheses raised in this study. The result implies that tertiary institution students reaction to WhatsApp social media application influences its instructional usefulness and gender plays a neutral role. It then recommended that lecturers should explore the WhatsApp social media application for instructional activities. Keywords: WhatsApp. Social Media Application, Mobile Learning, Instructional Usefulness Introduction Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has greatly affected education in the world. The use of ICT in education is a positive response to the development of communication advancement in the third millennium (Hartoyo, 2009). The trend in the use of ICT around the world triggered by the rate of access to internet and mobile phone has given birth to the social networking sites (SNS). The social network has been defined by many and generally viewed as referring to networked tools that allow people to create, interact and share ideas, artifacts and interests with each other (Anderson, 2010). The social network, such as Facebook, the video-sharing portal Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc; enable peer-to-peer communication between users and can promote the transmission of ideas and images to a large number of connections on the SNS (Khamis& Vaughn,2011). Social network usage is rapidly growing and expanding in the whole world especially among young people. Recent research indicates that internet use is increasingly more prevalent among younger age groups that use the internet more avidly compare to the rest of the population (Abdulla, 2007). The heavy use of social media networks among young people has opened up new opportunities of interaction and collaboration to dispense pedagogical sequence of instruction between the teachers and the learners. Hence, several networks have been integrated into the teaching techniques and methods of instructional delivery. For instance, researches have shown the relationship, in terms of effect, between WhatsApp and variables like attitude, behaviour and academic achievement (Aicha, 2014, Mortano& Giovanni, 2016; Alghazo&