Integrating Facebook into Basic Sciences Education: A Comparison of a Faculty-Administered Facebook Page and Group

Facebook (FB) is the most popular social media site visited by university students on a daily basis. Consequently, FB is the logical place to start with for integrating social media into education. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of a faculty-administered FB Page versus a FB Group to supplement and enhance human basic sciences educational experiences. First and second year medical students at the University of Ottawa (UO) and the University of Sharjah (UoS) to whom the group and page were dedicated were invited to take a survey regarding the use of FB as an extracurricular way of enhancing their teaching experience. The majority of students had presence on social networking sites with predominance of FB. Both students using the Anatomy page in UoS and members of the histology Group in UO stated that FB was a time effective way of communication with easy access to the learning material; it was an inviting atmosphere to participate with self-assessment questions being the most popular posts category. Pages and groups are equally accepted by students. Innovative instructors are required to experiment with ways to bring this familiar environment to the classroom. This entails an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the Page and Group which has been thoroughly discussed in this study. FB should not only be used because students are embracing this new technology trend but because of its inherent potentials in boosting e-learning.”