Psychosocial role of social media use within the learning environment: Does it mediate student engagement?

Abstract The use of social media within the educational research space has recently received attention for determining interactions within educational contexts. Multidimensional constructs such as student engagement and the learning environment that affect learning have also been pronounced recently. However, the place of social media use within the psychosocial learning environment and dimensions of student engagement in the context of higher education in Ethiopia remain less understood. This article sought to examine the mediating role of social media use by placing it within the formal psychosocial learning environment through moderation. Using a correlational design, 403 randomly selected undergraduate students are involved to examine the direct and indirect effects of psychosocial learning environments and social media use on student engagement employing structural equation modeling, particularly path analysis. Results indicate that social media use mediates the relationship between the learning environment and affective, cotgnitive, behavioral, and agentic engagement. Moreover, social media use appears to be as statistically and positively significant as the dimensions of the learning environment. This finding suggests that social media use can be positioned as a formalized aspect of the psychosocial learning environment rather than an informal and ancillary alternative. These findings challenge the traditional belief that social media is a random, unplanned and optional element of the learning environment. As such, these findings are useful because they inform higher education teachers and administrators to formalize the role of social media use in the designing of structured learning environments in higher education institutions.


Introduction
Technology-enabled education systems ranging from administration to testing and modalities of teacher-student interaction in and out of classrooms have revolutionized school practices (Meng et al., 2023).Specifically, smart devices, e-learning platforms, and social media use have dramatically transformed teacher-student relationships, pedagogical approaches, and the way classes have been conducted (Calvo et al., 2020;Caniglia et al., 2018).The pedagogical advantages of technologies benefited learners in "multiple ways: convenience, engagement, personalization, customization of learning content, and improved capabilities (Meng et al., 2023, p.1). Social media, though not explicitly designated as part of the broader learning environment, are online media platforms that facilitate social interaction among the academic community and the sharing and consumption of teaching-learning resources (Gambo & Musonda, 2021).
A vast array of literature evidences the enabling role of social media use for running sector-wide activities including promoting health education (Azadi et al., 2021), sustainable education and marketing educational services (Abbas et al., 2019;Calvo et al., 2020;Meng et al., 2023); managing COVID-19 pandemic initiatives (Abbas et al., 2021;Geng et al., 2022;Su et al., 2021); assessing puberty-related health needs, fostering business communication (Yu et al., 2022), accessing tourist information and hospitality (Al-Sulaiti & Fontenot, 2004;Al-Sulaiti et al., 2023, 2023), accessing information for consumer interests (Al-Sulaiti & Fontenot, 2004).Within the academic community, the rapid progress of information technologies makes it mandatory for appropriate social media to be used for social, communicative, and academic purposes (Kietzmann et al., 2011).There are suggestions that social media use in the classroom is related to increased student engagement, social media skills, and establishing peer networks (Dragseth, 2020).Although research findings supporting the positive role of social media for academic purposes abound, suggestions on the integration of social media into the learning environment are limited, and their effects on student outcomes inconsistent (Aleisa, 2022;Junco, 2012;Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010).
First, the ease or complexity of integrating social media use into the learning environment has been a concern for researchers.For example, Tess (2013) claims that integrating the use of social media into the realm of education is easier because college students are likely to access social media platforms for communicative purposes.This ease augments the potential of social media as a learning tool for cognitive engagement (Alshuaibi et al., 2018).In addition, recent studies on integrating social media as a cooperative learning environment in higher education contexts have found significant positive relations between some integration frameworks and cooperative learning, mitigation of social media challenges, students' intention to use social media, teacher-student -peer interaction, virtual knowledge exchange, and student engagement (Ansari & Khan, 2020;Hamadi et al., 2022).With seamless integration, social media can serve as an instructional platform to enhance learning environments by facilitating cooperation and communication between students and teachers to affect learning and performance (Sarwar et al., 2019).An examination of the literature suggests a greater possibility that the use of social media can be integrated into the education sphere with considerable ease and has positive relationships with student outcomes.
Despite this, the degree to which social media use can be integrated into the psychosocial aspects of the learning environment has been largely overlooked.While the need for more research to understand how the learning environment relates to specific dimensions of student engagement has been recognized (Sökmen, 2021), the effect of social media use positioned within the learning environment on student engagement remains unclear.
Second, the effects of social media use on student academic performance are mixed (Abbas et al., 2019) Some studies have argued that social media use positively affects academic performance by facilitating interactions between student learning experiences and group discussions (Al-Rahmi et al., 2018).Additionally, there is evidence that social media platforms encourage the achievement of intended learning outcomes and student engagement (Junco, 2012).In contrast, other studies suggest that social media use negatively affects academic performance.For example, students' overuse of social media may adversely affect their academic performance (Kirschner & Karpinski, 2010).Moreover, studies have predicted that the use of social media in learning environments is significantly and negatively related to academic performance (Alshuaibi et al., 2018).Consequently, because of its negative or positive effects, little is known about the unique experiences of Ethiopian university students' engagement during their undergraduate years (Tadesse et al., 2018).By investigating engagement as a primary contributor to learning outcomes (Pike et al., 2012), educators in higher education in Ethiopia should redefine their teaching (Burch et al., 2015).Thus, this study examined the relationship between student engagement and social media use within the learning environment.
In summary, by positioning social media use within the learning environment, it can be hypothesized that social media use mediates its relationship with student engagement.It has been maintained that student perceptions of the psychosocial learning environment explained significant and greater amounts of variance in academic performance than student background characteristics (Dorman, 2008;Fraser, 2012).Therefore, this study aimed to examine how social media can be positioned in relation to perceptions of the learning environment to explain the dimensions of student engagement in higher education in Ethiopia.

Conceptualizing student engagement
Student engagement is as difficult to identify as it is to measure (Loukomies et al., 2022).These difficulties partly emanate from the broad and general definitions of the concept.Definitions and conceptualizations of this construct vary in scope and focus in the field of higher education, but clarity remains a challenge (Baron & Corbin, 2012).For example, Reschly and Christenson (2012) viewed engagement as a student's active participation in academic and institutional activities, such as investments in educational goal setting and learning.Some suggestions regarding definitions are based on engagement with energy.Accordingly, engagement is viewed as the time, energy, and resources that students invest in the instructional and administrative activities that shape their learning (Krause, 2005).Others conceptualize engagement with a broader structural perspective as "the policies and practices that institutions use to induce students to take part in these activities" (Kuh, 2003, p. 24).For instance, Bowden et al. (2019) defined student engagement as what students devote to positive social, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions of learning and their classroom and institutional participation as focal agents or student voices.Similarly, Kuh (2003) defined engagement as the time and energy students invest in the learning environment beyond the classroom, including institutional policies and practices used to induce students to participate in these activities.Despite such diverse definitions, the clarity of ideas about and certainty of meaning of student engagement in the university context are questioned, and leaders are cascading down the need to improve student engagement in schools and ultimately to individual academics (Baron & Corbin, 2012).
The literature suggests that student engagement represents desirable learning outcomes and, consequently, a holistic measure of student academic success.For example, it has been considered a key process that catalyzes retention, persistence, success, deep and lifelong learning, curricular relevance, increased citizenship behavior, enhanced institutional reputation, and workreadiness (Bowden et al., 2019;Goldspink & Foster, 2013;Green, 2018) Kahu and Nelson (2018) argued that the more students engage in educational activities at both the classroom and institutional levels, the greater the likelihood of academic success.Student engagement is now considered an overarching "meta-construct," in which an ecosystem of students, educators, service staff, and institutions interact to create enriching tertiary experiences (Kahu, 2013).Therefore, it can be stated that student engagement has become an important part of learning as well as student policy in the higher education context.
As a meta-construct, Fredricks et al. (2004) conceptualized student engagement as multidimensional and consisting of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral dimensions, suggesting that a student's behavior, affective response, and cognition are linked.However, recent definitions stress the need to emphasize agentic engagement as the fourth dimension.As such, agentic engagement represents students' participation in the process of making decisions about learning and teaching-their involvement in university governance, as sources of feedback, as collaborators on pedagogical improvement projects, curriculum design, or the development of new learning activities-a view strongly related to the idea of student voice (Buckley, 2018;Reeve, 2012).This suggests a need for a critical assessment of the literature on the construction of a working theoretical synthesis to distill important dimensions of engagement and delimit the scope of this study.

Dimensions of student engagement
Student engagement is viewed as a multidimensional construct that subsumes behavioral, emotional, and cognitive components that are positively related to each other with some overlap (Fredricks et al., 2004).Behavioral engagement represents instructional participation, on-task attention, effort, and perseverance in academic activities.Emotional engagement refers to students' emotions such as interest, curiosity, enthusiasm, and pleasure, while cognitive engagement refers to the use of self-regulatory learning approaches.However, Reeve (2012) argued that this three-dimensional view of student engagement, which ignores agentic engagement, adopts a narrower view of engagement.The dimensional claim that student engagement is better conceptualized as a four-component construct than as a three-component construct has drawn attention.In response to this claim, Bowden et al. (2019) suggest the addition of a social dimension to the construct.They view student engagement as consisting of four distinct yet interrelated dimensions: behavioral engagement, affective engagement, cognitive engagement, and social engagement.This social participation, including student involvement in university governance regarding learning and teaching, is broadly conceived as agentic engagement (Buckley, 2018).Agentic engagement has been proposed as the fourth type of engagement (Montenegro, 2017;Reeve & Shin, 2020).Agentic engagement is conceptualized as an outward student behavior whereby the learner participates in institutional and instructional activities (Reeve, 2012).It is students' constructive action and behavior that contribute to the creation of supportive learning environment for themselves (Matos et al., 2018).Reeve and Shin (2020) suggested that students' agentic engagement can be promoted through the adoption of autonomy-supportive classroom learning environments that allow teachers to attend to student needs, voices, suggestions and facilitate personal strivings.Therefore, this study adopts a four-component conceptualization of engagement, namely affective, behavioral, cognitive, and agentic engagement (Reeve, 2012;Sinatra et al., 2015).

Affective engagement
The affective dimension of engagement is concerned with the emotions and passion that students have for a higher-education learning experience (Bowden, 2013).Feelings about learning activities reflect affective engagement (Klem & Connell, 2004).Emotionally engaged students value the significance of learning activities and joyful social interactions (Schaufeli et al., 2002).Positive emotions were related to behavioral engagement.Students' learning, achievement, life satisfaction, and health are all closely related to their emotions.Emotions lead to long-term psychological learning in higher education and beyond (Bowden et al., 2019).In any learning process, the state of emotions varies, and learning necessitates voluntary engagement with a healthy challenge (Goldspink & Foster, 2013).

Agentic engagement
Initially, this dimension was referred to as the social dimension of engagement (Bowden et al., 2019).According to them, social engagement represents the creation and development of interactive parties operating within the learning environment in tertiary experiences (Eldegwy et al., 2018).In the classroom, social engagement is marked by cooperation, listening to others, arriving on time, and maintaining a balanced teacher-student power structure.Outside the classroom, social engagement is identified by participation in community groups, study groups, and student unions and societies, resting upon shared values, interests, or purposes.On the other hand, Buckley (2018) represented social engagement as agentic since it includes social as well as structural participation in educational decisions.The contention is that students' social participation in the processes of making decisions about learning and teaching-their involvement in university governance, pedagogical and curricular participation, the development of new learning activities, etc.-promotes the agency of the learner (Buckley, 2018).This concept of engagement, strongly related to the idea of a student's voice, is termed agentic engagement (Reeve, 2012).

Behavioral engagement
Observable academic performance and participatory actions and practices are defined as the behavioral dimension of engagement (Schaufeli et al., 2002).Development of desirable behavior, attendance, effort to stay on task, contribution, participation in class discussions, involvement in academic and co-curricular activities, time spent on work, and perseverance and resiliency when faced with difficult tasks mark manifestations of behavioral engagement (Kahu et al., 2015).As a result of their involvement and participation in university life and extracurricular citizenship activities, behaviorally engaged students exhibit proactive participatory behaviors (Ashkzari et al., 2018).The behavioral component represents involvement in asking questions and participating in classroom discussions in instructional activities through effort and persistence (Fredricks et al., 2004).Practical collaboration and interactions are common approaches for eliciting behavioral engagement outcomes in teaching practice (Kim et al., 2015).

Cognitive engagement
The set of ongoing and active mental states experienced in relation to the focus objects of engagement is reflected in the cognitive dimension of engagement (Vivek et al., 2014).This might involve the degree of enthusiasm and care shown for tertiary communications as well as the amount of time spent organizing and arranging academic endeavors (Zepke et al., 2010).Accordingly, attitudes, mental processes, and academic task techniques, students who are cognitively engaged show a greater comprehension of the value and relevance of academic work (Kahu, 2013).Therefore, students who are cognitively engaged are more likely to exhibit higher-order thinking due to their awareness of the content, significance, and applicability of academic assignments (Reschly & Christenson, 2012).
Cognition also helps learners make decisions on how to acquire new materials.Cognition is much more challenging to study than affect.It can only be inferred from behavior, and students may have trouble putting their thoughts into words or have issues with memory and awareness when they self-report (Goldspink & Foster, 2013).The cognitive element of engagement pertains to commitment by achieving the stated objectives and the readiness to invest in cognitive capacity to acquire new information and skills or surmount a problem in an instructional environment (Marks, 2000).

Social media use, student engagement and learning environment: an intersection
Social media use facilitates engagement and interaction among students.With social media use, students are able to better manage their academic studies (Alshuaibi et al., 2018).As previously mentioned, prior research has tended to focus on how social media affects student engagement, but with a three-dimensional construct, namely, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement.This conceptualization excludes agentic engagement, which promotes learner agency.Second, prior research has found that when student engagement increases due to social media use, academic achievement is likely to improve.Rather, we hypothesized that the smooth reconstruction of the psychosocial learning environment with social media use increases student engagement, thereby facilitating the achievement of desirable learning outcomes.To do so, we treated social media use as a mediator that facilitates changes in both the psychosocial perception of the learning environment and student engagement.In particular, the effect of the learning environment on student agentic engagement, mediated by social media use, will be a significant novel contribution in the field.Figure 1 shows the conceptual framework constructed from the literature to examine how social media use mediates changes in the learning environment and student engagement.

Purpose of the study
While pursuing the skills of the twenty-first century, it is much more important to encourage students' engagement than ever before (Niemi & Multisilta, 2016).Thus, the current study may inform practitioners and policymakers about how social media use can be optimized to mediate the psychosocial learning environment and dimensions of student engagement to ultimately enhance learning in higher education.Educators may also use the results of this analysis to systematically alter the psychosocial learning environment with interactive social media platforms and the appropriation of their utilization to lead to optimal student engagement.
Therefore, this study aims to examine how social media use mediates the relationship between two multidimensional constructs: student perception of the learning environment and student engagement in higher education in Ethiopia.It is hypothesized that perception of the psychosocial aspects of the learning environment relates to the use of social media and the four dimensions of engagement (affective, cognitive, behavioral, and agentic).Furthermore, the study examines whether the dimensions of student engagement are a function of the use of social media in the context of public higher education institutions in Ethiopia.

The learning environment
The learning environment as viewed by students is a key idea that has drawn attention in the process of fulfilling student potential (Goldspink & Foster, 2013).Several aspects of the institutional learning environment have been shown to affect student involvement and the caliber of teaching  and pedagogy, notwithstanding personal and student background elements such as intellect (Fullarton, 2002).
Classroom instruction and student performance can be either hampered or facilitated by institutional contexts, particularly by students' perceptions of the learning environment (Waxman et al., 2021).It has been found that students' positive perceptions of learning environments account for a significant amount of variance in cognitive and affective outcomes (Dorman, 2008;Fraser, 2012;Rodriguez, 2008).Previous related research has established that perceived learning environment dimensions, such as cohesiveness, task orientation, rule clarity, student satisfaction, and teacher support, are significant predictors of changes in academic achievement (Waxman et al., 2021).For a greater understanding of these effects, there remains a need for more studies on the relationship between student engagement and perceived learning environments (Sökmen, 2021).Thus, in this study, it is hypothesized that perceived learning environments significantly predict both social media use and the four dimensions of student engagement.

H1:
Learning environment has a significant direct effect on the four dimensions of student engagement namely behavioral, cognitive, affective and agentic engagement.

H2:
Learning environment has a direct significant effect on social media use.

Social media use
Social media can truly enrich and enhance learning and teaching experiences in ways that are otherwise impossible (White et al., 2011).The argument is that social media is not simply an added component of communication but is an influential tool in building the learning environment within an educational context (Kim et al., 2015).Consequently, social media use must be formalized within the learning environment, suggesting the need to examine its role in relation to student engagement.To this end, it is hypothesized that social media use explains variance in both the learning environment and student engagement, provided that it is effectively integrated.

H3:
Social media use has a significant direct effect on the four dimensions of student engagement namely behavioral, cognitive, affective and agentic engagement.H4: Social media use mediates the relationship between learning environment and four dimensions of student engagement namely behavioral, cognitive, affective and agentic engagement.

Methods
In this study, a quantitative research approach, specifically correlational design, is employed, in which investigators use correlational measures to describe the degree of relationship between two or more variables or sets of scores (Creswell & Creswell, 2017).The authors have established that these designs have been expanded into more complex relationships among the variables found in structural equation modeling techniques.Since this study employs path analysis to analyze data, it is believed that correlational designs are the best fit for this study, which aims to identify potential correlations, associations, and relationships between variables.Numerous studies have investigated learning environments, social media, and student engagement with variations in operationalizations and the role of variables as dependent, independent, and/or motivating variables.For example, Sökmen (2021) investigated the relationship between the learning environment and student engagement, mediated by student self-efficacy.Cheng and Wan (2017) explored the effects of the classroom learning environment on students critical thinking skills.Yerdelen and Sungur (2019) examined the role of students' perceptions of classroom learning environments and teacher effectiveness on student science learning using multilevel analysis.Guo (2018) examined the relationships among students' perceptions of the learning environment, prior academic achievement, engagement, and learning outcomes.Tas (2016) investigated the influence of perceived classroom learning environment and motivation on student engagement in science learning.These studies vary in terms of level of education (primary, secondary, and tertiary) or conceptualization or dimensionality of student engagement and learning environment constructs.Previous research indicated that students' positive perceptions of these learning environments significantly predicted their cognitive and affective outcomes (Rodriguez, 2008).However, some studies have argued for the need to consider agentic engagement as a fourth dimension, particularly in student-centered classrooms (Buckley, 2018;Montenegro, 2017;Reeve, 2012;Reeve & Shin, 2020;Reeve & Tseng, 2011).Thus, this study adopts a four-dimensional conceptualization of student engagement.
Learning environments have been conceptualized differently, such as optimal learning environments (Shernoff, 2013), physical and psychosocial learning environments (Ahmad et al., 2014;Baars et al., 2021), virtual learning environments (Lowe, 2023), and both material and digital learning environments (Spire, 2023).Researchers have conceptualized the learning environment construct with the What Is Happening in This Class?(WIHIC) scale.The scale is a parsimonious classroom environment instrument with adequate evidence of validity and reliability (Dorman, 2008;Fraser, 2012) besides addressing pertinent educational problems of the day such as inequality (Charalampous & Kokkinos, 2017).Consequently, the construct has been dominantly operationalized with seven interrelated dimensions, namely, student cohesiveness, teacher support, involvement, investigation, task orientation, cooperation, and equity, which is currently the most commonly used psychosocial learning environment tool around the world (Dorman, 2008).Accordingly, the current study uses a four-dimensional conceptualization of student engagement and a seven-dimensional conceptualization of the learning environment.

Participants
In Ethiopia, there are currently 50 universities nationwide of which eight of them are situated in Amhara regional state where the study took place.The higher education subsystem is going a differentiation reform that categorizes universities into three types: research, applied and comprehensive universities.Of the eight universities in the region, three universities, one from each type, are selected based on convenience to data access, namely Bahir Dar University (research category), Wollo University (applied category), and Woldia University (comprehensive category).The inclusion of samples from these categories will increase the representativeness for differentiated higher education subsystem.The three universities hosted 20,765 regular students across all class years in 2022 G.C. Using epi-info v.2, the sample size was determined to be 377.Students from these universities are selected using stratified random sampling technique.Considering the nonresponse rate, 411 questionnaires were dispatched, of which 403 were returned.Thus, the analysis was based on questionnaire data collected from 403 students from three public higher education institutions.Data were collected in the first semester of 2022, when first-year students were not admitted.There were 190 (47%) girls and 213 (53%) boys from different classes.

Context of the study
Innovation and social media use are helpful in diverse contexts (Aqeel et al., 2022;Li et al., 2022;Schmidt et al., 2022;Zhuang et al., 2022).In Ethiopia, there is a tendency to use media as part of the teaching-learning process, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.Thus, teachers and students communicate information about course materials and assignments through social media.
While the most dominant one in practice seems to be the telegram, they also use YouTube videos to facilitate interaction.Students are expected to remain active in the learning process through inquiry and questioning and to construct knowledge in their minds.The teacher is expected to create a participatory learning atmosphere in which students can freely negotiate their ideas.Therefore, there is an intersection between the learning environment in which learning takes place and the media as a mediator to facilitate interaction and student engagement in higher education institutions in Ethiopia.

Psychosocial learning environment
Considerable past classroom learning environment research has focused on the primary and secondary levels of education and the subject areas of science and mathematics.Recent studies have validated its application to the learning environments of higher education institutions.Skordi and Fraser (2019) validated psychometric qualities and applied the widely used "What Is Happening In This Class?" (hereafter WIHIC) questionnaire among tertiary statistics students.The focus of more recently validated instruments has been student-centered classrooms based on students' and instructors' perspectives, as opposed to early instruments' emphasis on teachercentered classrooms (Fraser, 2012).The WIHIC is one of the measures that is most frequently used to gauge how students and teachers view the psychosocial aspects of the classroom.Its exceptional validity across a variety of circumstances and nations has aided in attaining what has been referred to as "bandwagon status" (Dorman, 2008).
Validation.The final WIHIC consisted of seven scales with eight items each: task orientation, cooperation, engagement, investigation, teacher assistance, and equity.Eight items were included for each subscale.Students were asked to score each item on a 5-point Likert scale, with 1 being the worst option and 5 being the best (always).To determine convergent validity, SPSS AMOS items were assessed for their loadings, internal consistency, and average variance extracted.Each item's loading shows how well it correlates with its related concepts.All loadings for our data in this investigation were higher than the suggested cutoff value of 0.70.

Student engagement
The second instrument adopted was the Student Engagement Scale, which was validated by Veiga (2016).Based on earlier research, the current scale was improved compared to its predecessors, which measured the same construct in two ways, which may be useful for research purposes or interventions requiring the measurement of a large number of variables: (a) is a brief and concise scale for measuring the three generally accepted dimensions of student engagement in school, which have been extensively described in the literature (i.e., cognitive, affective, and behavioral); (b) includes a fourth dimension, agentic engagement, which refers to the student's active participation in instructional and structural decisions.This study proposed a four-dimensional definition of student engagement for a deeper understanding of the topic.
Validation.Similar to the learning environment scale, the student engagement scale was pilottested before actual use to account for cultural differences and adapt it contextually.As expected, the instrument was found to be reliable in measuring student engagement in public higher education institutions in Ethiopia.To determine convergent validity, the student engagement items were analyzed for their loadings, internal consistency, and average variance extracted.Each item's loading shows how well it correlates with its related concepts.All loadings for our data in this investigation were higher than the suggested cutoff value of 0.70.Specifically, the four scales achieve a Cronbach's alpha ranging from 0.72 to 0.79, each with five items, which meets the requirement for further data collection.Response alternatives were adapted, ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree.

Social media use
A scale modified from Lindberg and Tavakoli (2013) was used to quantify social media usage, operationalized as the use of social media for educational purposes.A five-point scale, from strongly disagree to strongly agree, was used to collect data on the students' use of social media.
Validation.Social media usage items were analyzed for their loadings, internal consistency, and average variance extracted to suggest convergent validity, similar to other variables.Each item's loading shows how well it correlates with its related concepts.All loadings for our data in this investigation were higher than the suggested cutoff value of 0.70.Specifically, the five subscales showed a Cronbach's alpha ranging from 0.78 to 0.96, each with items ranging from four to five, which satisfies the requirement for further data collection.Response alternatives were adapted, ranging from (1) strongly disagree to (5) strongly agree.
In this study, for all variables, structural equation modeling assumptions were analyzed.These include the z-test, extreme values determined by the coefficients of kurtosis and skewness, and the normal distribution.In addition, we examined whether there was a linear connection between the variables and whether the dataset was homogeneous.To assess the model's goodness of fit, this study considered the goodness of fit indices X2/df, RMSEA, GFI, CFI, SRMR, and NNFI.Following a preliminary evaluation, it became clear that the dataset met the criteria for a structural equation modeling study.

Procedures
The instruments described above were administered with guidance from the researchers during one class period by the course teachers.The researchers communicated with the course teachers to allow time to orient students about the questionnaires.Students' oral consent was sought to complete the questionnaire.For those willing, a demonstration was given on how to complete the questionnaire.The participants were selected using a simple random sampling technique.A total of 403 students completed the questionnaire.Data were collected in classrooms during the first semester of October 2022.

Data analysis
Data analysis was performed using SPSS v23, which integrates AMOS as part of the analysis function.To examine the mediating role of social media use in the relationship between the perceived learning environment and student engagement, a path analysis was undertaken.The proper method of analysis to test the significance of a given mediator is path analysis (Collier, 2020;Hair et al., 2019;Schumacker & Lomax, 2015).Previous studies have used path analysis to examine the mediating roles of self-efficacy and motivation in the relationships among dimensions of learning environments and student engagement (Sökmen, 2021;Tas, 2016).In this study, we examine the mediating role of social media in the relationship between the learning environment and student engagement.The validity and reliability indices of the three constructs were examined through confirmatory factor analysis to determine whether they satisfied the requirements for structural equation modeling.Moreover, the direct and indirect effects of the perceived learning environment and social media use were examined via paths.

Results
The variables used in this study have subscales and each are measured on a 5-point Likert scale.The mean and standard deviation of the variables are derived from the descriptive statistics of each subscales presented in Table 1.
The level of social media use across the five subscales shows mixed results.Figure 2 shows that ease of use (with a minimum value of 5 and a maximum value of 25 on the scale) and collaborative learning (with a minimum value of 3 and a maximum value of 25 on the scale) subscales showed a lower mean compared to social media use and usefulness subscales (with a minimum value of 5 and a maximum value of 25 on the scale), which showed a higher mean.
The four dimensions of student engagement showed a relatively higher mean, suggesting a higher level of student involvement and participation.Figure 3 shows that the averages of the dimensions are closer to the mean of 20 (with a minimum value of 5 and a maximum value of 25 on each scale).
The level of psychosocial perceptions of the learning environment can also be indicated using mean values.Figure 4 shows that the seven dimensions of the construct indicated a mean ranging from 23 for the teacher support dimension to 29 for the task orientation dimension (with a minimum value of 8 and a maximum value of 40 on the scale).Thus, the learning environment construct can be considered a medium in the sample.
The relationships between and among the psychosocial learning environment, social media use, and student engagement were examined through intercorrelations and path analysis to determine whether social media use moderates the relationship between the learning environment and student engagement.Intercorrelations showed potential relationships among the psychosocial learning environment, social media use, and dimensions of student engagement.Table 1 shows that most of the variables yield statistically significant and positive correlation coefficients, most of which appear to have a moderate correlation.However, agentic engagement was positively correlated with behavioral engagement.
Using path analysis, the hypothesized relationships between the psychosocial classroom learning environment, social media use, and dimensions of engagement were examined.Fit indices were used to evaluate how well the proposed model fits the data.RMSEA and S-RMR values were lower than .08,and NNFI, CFI, and GFI values were greater than .90, as recommended for good model fit (Kline, 201523).In the present study, the fit indices (RMSEA = .074,SRMR = .042,NNFI = .907,CFI = .934,GFI = .882)suggest that the proposed model fits the data well.However, the chisquare test result was significant (χ2 = 30.99,p = .27,df = 16).After the fit indices provided evidence for the appropriateness of the model, path coefficients were examined.Table 2 presents the direct effects of these variables.
First, the influence of the psychosocial learning environment on student engagement was examined.The results in Table 2 show that the psychosocial learning environment has a direct, significant, and positive effect on the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and agentic components of student engagement (p < 0.001).
Second, this study examined whether social media use predicts student engagement.As shown in Table 3, social media use significantly and positively predicted the affective, cognitive, behavioral, and agentic dimensions of student engagement (p < 0.001).Third, social media use had statistically significant indirect effects on the affective, behavioral, cognitive, and agentic dimensions of student engagement (p < 0.001).Fourth, the learning environment was found to have significant indirect effects on affective, cognitive, behavioral, and agentic dimensions of student engagement through the partial mediation of social media use.For example, affective engagement sowed an increase in .21standard deviation units with a corresponding one-unit change in the learning environment.

Discussion
This study investigated the influence of social media use on student engagement in the context of the psychosocial learning environment in three public universities in the Amhara region: Bahir Dar, Woldia, and Wollo Universities.In the present study, the four-dimensional conceptualization of student engagement, namely affective, behavioral, agentic, and cognitive engagement, was adopted.It also examined the use of social media that was contextualized or positioned within the learning environment.Accordingly, to examine the psychosocial positioning of social media use within the learning environment, this study hypothesized that social media use mediates the relationship between psychosocial learning environments, the conditions under which learning takes place, and student engagement.The findings from the intercorrelations suggest that social media use and psychosocial learning environments appear to have positive, statistically significant relationships with affective, behavioral, agentic, and cognitive engagements.
Previous research showed that social media use as an interactive learning platform in higher education occurs as an unplanned activity in an informal, unorganized, and unstructured context rather than being imbedded within the natural psychosocial order of learning (Gambo & Musonda, 2021).This study showed that social media use a significant position within the psychosocial learning environment, facilitating or mediating the relationship between the learning environment and student engagement.The psychosocial learning environment explained the significant variance in the use of social media.This implies that aspects of the psychosocial learning environment, such as cooperation, student cohesion, task orientation investigation, involvement, and others, are highly facilitated using social media in higher education institutions.This finding suggests that social media use can be formally positioned within psychosocial learning as a formal part of the learning environment rather than an informal alternative, as it positively and significantly affects the interactions between students, teachers, and institutions themselves.This finding is consistent with findings from other studies that the instrumentality of social media use to enhance student engagement, interaction, and collaboration is supported by significant empirical evidence in higher education (Ansari & Khan, 2020;Dragseth, 2020).Similarly, the findings from the current study corroborate other findings that suggest that higher education institutions may routinely integrate social media platforms into their classroom learning environments to maximize learning (Manu et al., 2021).
The hypothesis that social media use influences affective, behavioral, cognitive, and agentic engagement was supported by the findings of this study.Social media use significantly predicted the dimensions of student engagement.This suggests that social media use appropriates the time and energy that students invest in educational activities, including participation in the decision-making of curricular and institutional matters that affect their learning.However, this finding is inconsistent with that of (Alshuaibi et al., 2018), who found that social media had no significant effect on behavioral, agentic, or emotional engagement.However, there are findings contrary to those of Alshuaibi et al. (2018) that support the findings of the current study.For example, Al-Rahmi et al. ( 2018) found that social media positively and significantly affects collaborative learning, which is explained by interactions with peers and supervisors, engagement, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness.Similarly, Dragseth (2020) also found that the use of social media in graduate and undergraduate courses increased student engagement through the establishment of networks where real-world interactions with course contents and materials occurred.Related findings substantiating this line of research suggest that social media use augments the enhancement of students' cognitive engagement in higher education by means of facilitating knowledge sharing culture (Ngoc Hoi, 2021).In the current study context, particularly, students' participation in collaborative learning exercises, interactions among peers and teachers, and access to learning resources from diverse media outlets such as Telegram and YouTube have been made easier with the use of social media.
Some studies have addressed potential mediators of student engagement such as motivation, teacher support (Reeve & Shin, 2020) and others engagement itself fully mediating the relationship between motivation and academic achievement (Reeve, 2012).In another perspective, the engagement-learning environment relation within student-teacher dialectical framework suggested that variations in student engagement produces changes in the learning environment, and that engagement fully mediates the relationship between motivation and achievement (Reeve, 2012).With this dialectical perspective, the temporal precedence of the designing of the learning environment considering social media as a significant predictor of student engagement in linear relationship is challenged.Overall, social media use significantly contributes to the process of engaging students in multiple learning experiences.Broadly speaking, the usefulness of social media and the internet is well established in many contexts (Abbas et al., 2019;NeJhaddadgar et al., 2020;Wang et al., 2023).

Conclusion
Previous research has established that students' perceptions of their learning environment are key determinants of their academic and affective learning outcomes.The psychosocial learning environment developed previously includes aspects such as student cohesion, teacher support, involvement, investigation, task orientation, cooperation, and equity.However, it is also important to rethink the considerable position social media has recently acquired within the context of the psychosocial learning environment.From the results found, it can be concluded that social media use mediated the relationship between the psychosocial learning environment and the behavioral, cognitive, affective, and agentic dimensions of student engagement.Our contention here is that the psychosocial learning environment needs to be reconstructed with the integration of social media use as part of the psychology of learning rather than as an alternative means of learning.It is time to rethink the teaching learning processes in line with new advancements in pedagogy to shape the learning environment in a way that it meets students demands.This is a call for the reexamination of psychosocial learning environment aspects need to digitalize them to meeting 21 st century classrooms.A major contribution of this study is the positioning of social media use within the learning environment by examining the influence of social media use on student engagement.
The study found that social media use, situated and integrated with the psychosocial learning environment, influenced affective, behavioral, cognitive, and agentic engagement as significantly as the elements of psychosocial learning environment.As a result, future research may theorize an extended view of the learning environment that subsumes social media use as an integral part of learning psychology.

Implications of the study
Some policy, pedagogical and theoretical implications may be suggested to institutional leaders, policymakers, and teachers.Nowadays, technology has proven that learning is not limited to classroom walls, and even within the classroom, it can be enhanced by social media use.It has now become apparent that social media, appropriated to the psychosocial learning space, has the potential to mediate various forms of student engagement, including participation beyond the classroom, to facilitate holistic learning.Thus, policy makers may consider social media use in designing strategies to enhance student learning.The pedagogical implication of this study is highly practical.Teachers may design classroom learning environments by integrating social media use to facilitate the teaching learning process.Rather than considering social media use as alternative and external to the teaching learning process, teachers may integrate it into the psychosocial role of learning environments to facilitate interaction among student and teacherstudent relationships.This will extend the instructional interaction beyond the classroom walls.Social media use, therefore, can be equally significant as other aspects of the psychosocial learning environment.Theoretically, it is worth revisiting psychosocial learning environments in light of recent capacity of social media as an enabler of pedagogical interaction in classrooms.Thus, theorizing social media as a socially interactive element of the learning environment advances student-centered classroom approaches and engagement.specifically, student's contribution to the flow of instructions they receive, particularly known as agentic engagement.Future research may theorize social media use as part of the psychosocial aspect of the learning environment rather than external to it.Because of the higher interactive opportunities social media creates, future research may look into how the learning environment could be digitalized, and aspects of the learning environment may be altered to develop more socially interactive learning environments within the digital and global world.

Policy recommendation
Student engagement has dominated the higher education policy landscape, particularly as a measure and comparison of institutional success.As such, it can be used as a proxy for examining changes in student outcomes and policy effectiveness.Different variables have entered the picture to affect changes in student engagement in the context of higher education.However, policymakers have long considered the use of social media as a secondary and informal alternative to the psychosocial learning environment.Findings from this study challenge the notion that social media use cannot be separated from the psychosocial aspect of the learning environment, which essentially demands social interaction.Thus, policymakers shall consider the development of change initiatives that demand the formalization or integration of social media platforms to effect change that is essentially socially interactive.Social media has now become a resource that can be harnessed to facilitate not only material exchange and communication but also social interaction within the academic community.Findings suggest that social media use advances the different dimensions of engagement that facilitate the learning process.

Limitations
The present study has some limitations, one of which is its reliance on self-reported data about the three constructs.Reliance on self-reported data may have confounded the results.
Moreover, correlational designs may not allow a comparison of the effects of the learning environment on student engagement with and without social media use.Thus, methodologies that enable deeper understanding and reconceptualization of the learning environment and student engagement, such as qualitative focus groups, might help address such limitations.
The study may also suffer from social desirability bias as students may appear to present themselves as if they are always actively engaged in the learning process and social media use, which may affect the results.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Conceptual framework for the study.

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Figure 2. Levels of social media use subscales in the sample.
Figure 4. Levels psychosocial dimensions of the learning environment in the sample.