Educating nursing students in the present technological environment requires professors to create assignments that will utilize innovations in social media. Today’s nursing students are accustomed to looking for information on the web, as are their future clients. The challenge to educators is to combine the use of social media with patient education so that future nurses will develop skills to reach a diverse population. This presentation will explain how creating a Pinterest board that holds pins created by each student shows a new way to provide patient education.
Methods:
Pinterest is a company that provides an avenue for ‘visual discovery’. Over 70 million people use this platform to collect ideas for various ventures and interests. Users create and share virtual bulletin boards with visual bookmarks called pins. Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra and Evan Sharp founded the site in 2009. When a person sets up their free account, they are notified daily of pins that they might have interest in viewing. The bulletin boards can be publicly or privately shared.
In several junior level Maternity nursing courses, students were given a Pinterest pin project assignment. They were told to pick a topic from the course outline (no two alike). They were sent an invitation to a private board so they could pin their posting where only the professor and fellow classmates would see the pins. Reference lists were sent by email to the instructor. A rubric was used to grade the pins.
Results:
The feedback has been positive and the students were very excited and enthusiastic about the opportunity to create pins. The postings were beautiful and eye-catching. They were written at a fourth- grade reading level and include illustrations and graphics. A qualitative study is being conducted to examine the feasibility of expanding the use of this type of project to other levels in the nursing program.
Conclusion:
Using social media in learning activities, nursing students can become more involved the educational experience so that meaning can be created through self-driven analysis. Learning activities that are experienced as challenging and relevant, and that allow students to feel in control of their learning and confident in their ability, gives intrinsic satisfaction. Striving to improve nursing education by incorporating social media has the potential to improve the learning process with active learning strategies and increase engagement.
Lopez and Cleary (2018) noted that, as technology advances, teaching and learning pedagogy that uses social media will enable graduates to use technology in their practice. Given the increasing presence of Pinterest and its availability to the general population, the challenge is to incorporate its use into classroom assignments so it can become a useful tool in the graduate’s arsenal. This study intends to show the connection between the use of Pinterest and student engagement.