Facebook as a Technological Tool for Teaching and Learning - 3

Improving nursing education in the 21^st century is said to be a challenge for nursing faculty. Hence, faculty is encouraged to utilize new technologies and to embrace methodologies that include more interactions by the student. Within the last five or six years, social media such as Facebook and Twitter have been used by healthcare students as an instrument of sharing information (Roland, Johnson, & Swain, 2011).

My choice therefore to incorporate Facebook as my technological tool for teaching and learning, thus has empirical suggestive evidence as a logical tool for educating nurses. The results of a pilot study suggested the potential of utilizing blogs to store and share nursing knowledge, hence improving communication and analytical thinking skills (Roland, Johnson, & Swain, 2011).

I have noticed that co-workers are freer in expressing their thoughts on social media, as compared to the work place or in classrooms. It appears people are more apt to think outside the box, when they are not in the box of a classroom, so to speak.

A study looking at behavior modeling influenced by Facebook, found a positive correlation between the social media and identity development (Moreno, Kota, Schoohs, & Whitehill, 2013). This suggests that various thinking skills indeed can be modelled through the use of Facebook. I recently shared on my page on Facebook that I will be getting married in San Diego next week Saturday the 23^rd of August, and I suddenly noticed that two friends of mine who were confirmed bachelors for life are now engaged! This just made me wonder whether I may have been a positive influence in modelling this courtship behavior.

                                                        References

Moreno, M. A., Kota, R., Schoohs, S., & Whitehill, J. M. (2013). The Facebook Influence Model: A Concept Mapping Approach. Cyberpsychology, Behavior & Social Networking, 16(7), 504-511. doi:10.1089/cyber.2013.0025

Roland, E., Johnson, C., & Swain, D. (2011). “Blogging” As an Educational Enhancement Tool for Improved Student Performance: A Pilot Study in Undergraduate Nursing Education. New Review of Information Networking, 16(2), 151-166. doi:10.1080/13614576.2011.619923

Facebook as a Technological Tool for Teaching and Learning - 2

Facebook as a technology teaching and learning tool I reiterate appears to be a tool with exponential capabilities. Forming a closed group with my students would definitely infuse life and an excitement into the respective courses I utilize Facebook for. Apart from the fact that Facebook is a powerful social media that can empower human networking, I have personally even obtained employment offers from head-hunters on this media tool. Various political, religious, and professional organizations are on Facebook. A nurse practitioner community (https://www.facebook.com/nursepractitioner.np) offers networking opportunities and job opportunity information; The American Nurses Association also has a Facebook presence (https://www.facebook.com/AmericanNursesAssociation); CME Resource/NetCE for Nurses offers continuing education resources on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/netce4nurses), and a host of others even up to the White House (https://www.facebook.com/WhiteHouse) which can offer information on upcoming medical legislature.

Public health research depicts the media influences how people perceive nursing (Geller & Summers, 2014). Facebook is a technological tool that can help build up the image of nursing. In a study looking at social media adoption in local health departments (LHD) it was found out that amongst their sample group of 618 LHDs, twenty-four percent had Facebook, 8% utilized Twitter, and 7% used both. LHDs serving larger populations were more likely to be innovators, tweeted more often, and had more social media connections (Harris, 2013). Mark Zuckerburg is the CEO of Facebook, and was named 2010 TIME magazine person of the year for bringing 500 million people almost a twelfth of humanity together on one network (George, 2011). What Zuckerburg has achieved with Facebook is a phenomenal historical contribution which has trickled down to nursing.

                                                             Reference

Geller, L., & Summers, S. (2014). Changing how the world thinks about nursing. Canadian Nurse, 110(1), 26-30.

George, D. R. (2011). 'Friending Facebook?' A minicourse on the use of social media by health professionals. Journal Of Continuing Education In The Health Professions, 31(3), 215-219. doi:10.1002/chp.20129

Harris, J. (2013). Social Media Adoption in Local Health Departments Nationwide. American Journal Of Public Health, 103(9), 1700. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2012.301166

       Facebook is an online social networking service. Users can create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, post status updates and photos, and receive notifications when others update their profiles. As of the first quarter 2014, Facebook had 1.28 billion monthly active users (Statista, 2014).

I have a personal page on this social networking tool, and I have derived so much fun networking with people from all over the world. I have even used Facebook to connect with classmates I went to secondary school with last seen over 30 years ago! That being said, I have observed businesses, politicians, churches, and various entities promote their agendas on Facebook. Thus I ask myself "What stops us as nurses from using Facebook to teach and learn?" The answer, is that we are only limited to what we ourselves limit ourselves to. 

       Facebook’s influence on the 21^st century, as well as the phenomenal growth of other social media technologies such as Twitter, heralds a new reality for health care professions. In three mini-courses on using social media at Penn State Hershey Medical Center, 15 participants including doctors, nurses, social workers, informational technology personnel, medical and nursing students, and health researchers undertook courses sponsored by their department of human resources called “Friending Facebook?” to encourage conversations on integration of social media in medicine. The feedback from the course, relayed that “friending” patients and inviting them into one’s personal network was uniformly resisted, but strategically “friending” colleagues and support groups was most useful for professional growth (George, 2011).

“As educational tools, social media allow patients, caregivers and providers to access some of the most up-to-date materials related to health care issues. This information can come in the form of videos, blogs, tweets, websites, and Facebook pages” (Rutledge et al., 2011).

       I would integrate the use of Facebook with teaching individual courses by registering an account under an agreed group name with my students. Then I would have them register individual accounts separate from any existing accounts, and then request friendship from me. We will then be linked as a closed group accessible to only us, and strictly to discuss and share ideas about the particular course in question. I would use surveymonkey.com as a summative evaluation tool and email it to my students for feedback.

                                                           References

George, D. R. (2011). 'Friending Facebook?' A minicourse on the use of social media by health professionals. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 31(3), 215-219. doi:10.1002/chp.20129

Rutledge, C. M., Renaud, M., Shepherd, L., Bordelon, M., Haney, T., Gregory, D., & Ayers, P. (2011). Educating Advanced Practice Nurses in Using Social Media in Rural Health Care. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 8(1), 1-14. doi:10.2202/1548-923X.2241

Statista. (2014). The statistics portal: Number of monthly active Facebook users worldwide from 3rd quarter 2008 to 2nd quarter 2014 (in millions). Retrieved from http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/