Introduction
The understanding of the use of social media for academic or professional purposes is sparse. Very little is known or reported in the literature about nursing students’ engagement with social media as a scholarly resource. The pedagogy of nursing education is changing as more academic settings are using social media platforms as a tool (Schmitt, Schmitt & Booth, 2012).
Objectives
The purpose of this study is to determine baseline data on engagement behaviors of nursing students pertaining to their use of social media platforms to access academic and professional content.
The overall questions guiding the survey were developed specifically to capture nursing student report of social media use, including both personal and academic/professional activities, and to explore how faculty or others support or foster the use of social media as well as reading/subscribing to scholarly journals. These questions include:
- What are students doing in the social media environment and print/internet resource world today?
- What is faculty doing in relation to referring students to scholarly websites, online resources, and social media?
- How do students use social media in general and internet resources related to their professor influence as well as personal characteristics including age, geographic location, and personal education aspirations?
Methods
A web survey using SurveyMonkey® was emailed to a sample of approximately 3,400 students within the market contact list of the publishing company of the American Journal of Nursing, Wolters Kluwer Health. Although not all students who participated in the survey completed all questions, 662 responded, and 542 were complete representing a 19% return rate and 15% completion rate (which is comparable to online surveys with large database distributions), with 97 additional web-based responses added to the total of 769 responses.
Results
Results include an analysis of student characteristics including age, educational setting, geographic location of program and educational aspirations. Most students reported seeking their bachelor’s degree including BSN/BS/BA (35%), with 21% pursuing a master’s degree including MSN/MS/MA. The sample was noticeably educated, with 12% already pursuing doctoral degrees. The sample was noticeably older (>50% over 40 years old), 33% of respondents are enrolled in an online program, 25% in an urban setting 22% a suburban setting and 20% rural area. The academic goals of the respondents were: 35% want to eventually pursue a doctoral degree; 22% have their BSN but are stopping after their master’s degree, 20% are getting their BSN and not going any further, and 3% are getting their diploma only.
The social platform most frequently used by all respondents for personal reasons was Facebook at 99% and LinkedIn for Academic/Professional reasons at 85%, results also speak to the way students access social media platforms (hardware) and their baseline knowledge of academic/professional content.
In addition to providing seminal baseline descriptive statistics on social media use in nursing students, significant findings include correlation of age and social media usage, professor influences on student use of social media for academic/professional reasons the influence of educational setting, student geographic location, and self-reported educational aspirations on professor influence.
Conclusions
This study serves as a seminal baseline of nursing student social media usage. With implications for both educators and publishers, the results show that students use social media for academic and professional purposes, and as such, the venue poses a potential impact as an educational tool.
Future research must include a deeper understanding of academic and professional content, and the mechanisms for ensuring its credibility and value as educational tools. With this insight into why and how nursing students use social media and the insight that their academic and professional use is directly influenced by professor input, educators have the ability to begin to explore this emerging medium for classroom purposes.