Attitudes of nursing professional educators toward the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool: A survey

Introduction: Social media applications are opening up new window for innovative teaching, learning and research among health sciences educators. It is becoming the indispensable part of today's educational system. The use of social media is also rapidly increasing in medical education and it is important to know how these educators are using social media tools as a teaching and learning tool. Objective: The object of this study was to assess the attitudes of nursing professional educators toward the use of social media as a teaching and learning tool in the selected research setting. Method: The target population for the present study was 105 nursing teachers and students selected using the purposive method. A self-structured questionnaire was designed on the basis of previous studies conducted on the subject field. Altogether, 94 teachers and students completed and returned (response rate 89.15%) the questionnaire. The quantitative data, thus collected were analysed using SPSS statistical programme. Results: The results of study show that more than 90% of the respondents were fully aware and were having knowledge of social media and its use in medical education. 51.06% respondents used the self teaching method to learn the use of social media applications. The most favorite applications of social media used by the respondents were Google+ with 73.40% responses, Wikipedia and YouTube with 38.29 % responses each, LinkedIn with 15.95% responses and Facebook with 14.89% responses. 42.56% of the respondents were of opinion that social media is a useful teaching and learning tool in nursing and medical education. The major problem while using social media applications, as indicated by the respondents is data security about which they were more concerned with 32.97% responses. The most common educational needs of nursing professional educators i.e. teachers and students include receiving more in-depth information about how to use social media, as well as more practice in using it for teaching and learning tool. Conclusion: The use of social media applications in health sciences teaching, learning and research is increasing rapidly. Although, there is a need to closely study the useful applications with its secure use in health sciences for the more advancement of healthcare delivery so that gap of accessibility and affordability may be bridged.