ABSTRACT:
Social media can be a useful tool within the medical education curriculum if implemented correctly. In this study it was observed that medical education students use social media platform for intellectual / educational activities mostly thereby benefitting both the students and lecturer. Six learning tools was investigated in this study but Audio/Visual learning tools is the most favourable among the medical students which implies that they would prefer what they can hear and see during their lecture. The Google+ social media platform is more preferred by the medical students to use for their educational studies because of its creativeness and uniqueness as observed in this study. The instrument used in this study was tested using SPSS Cronbach's Alpha to be at 0.869, this value is considered adequate for using the instrument. The population of this study comprised newly recruited medical personnel (medical doctors, pharmacist, nurses, laboratory technologist, medical record officers) for deployment into all the Primary Health Centres in Lagos State.
This study may be more pertinent to ask, “How best can social media be incorporated into medical education and which social media platform would be the most appropriate?” It tends to look at for what purpose are the medical educational students using the social media platform? How often do they use the platforms? How would they rate learning tools they come about during the cause of using any social platform to study? Do they have separate social media platform for academic? Are they concerned about privacy if using a grouped social platform? How would they want to see social medial platform used in medical education in the future?
Keywords:
Medical education, social media platform, WhatsApp, Facebook, Google+.
