#OTalk 10th December 2013 – Perceptions of Social Media in Higher Education

Over to our hosts for an introduction to this topic

We are two Occupational Therapy students doing our dissertation on social media networking sites in healthcare education. Our topic is looking at how students and lecturers perceive how social media networking sites (specifically Twitter and Facebook) could be used in healthcare higher education, including the benefits and possible barriers.
Obviously social media is EVERYWHERE and is really important today. Educational settings are beginning to bring it into learning in lots of different ways, from live feeds during lectures to virtual office hours and peer learning on placements. Healthcare practitioners use blogs, Twitter and Facebook to increase their continuing learning and reflecting. However, in healthcare higher education there could be said to be a reluctance to bring social media into the classroom due to perceived risks, especially around confidentiality and professional reputations.
We would love for you to get involved and share your thoughts and ideas on the topic (and you don’t need to be a student or lecturer!). We won’t be using your comments in our dissertation- this is just something we’re really interested in and want to do for our own noseiness!
Thanks,
Rachel (@dobedobedo14)
& Hannah (@hannahnaps)

Some initial questions:
What and how do you use social media networking (eg mobile, tablet)
What do you find useful about social media networking sites?
What do you think barriers towards using social media networking sites could be? Eg access, training, teaching methods…
What professionalism issues could occur?
What do you think the benefits are of using social media networking sites? Eg independent learning, engaging learners…
How can we implement social media networking into healthcare higher education?

Here are some resources:
http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/791/1411