Abstract
Educational landscape has changed drastically over the past decades with the integration of technology to support the role of educators. The objectives of this study were to examine the use of social media application among dental students and to investigate significant demographic variables with regard to social media use for academic purposes. All dental students across all academic years were invited to participate in a self-administered questionnaire (content validated, pre-tested) survey conducted online via Google Forms. Overall response rate was 67.8%. Of the 244 respondents, 99.1% owned smartphones, with a majority of them were iPhone and Android users. Notably, 91.4% of the respondents had access to internet data via a third generation (3G) mobile carrier and WiFi connection. A majority of the respondents (97.1%) used social media to communicate or connect with friends whereas 5.7% of them used it for business purposes. There was no significant association between gender, year of study and type of internet access with the mean of social media usage for academic purposes (p > 0.05). Most of the respondents preferred YouTube (74.6%) and Google (73.7%) for seeking information in their study. In conclusion, we found that majority of respondents had acknowledged the importance of social media in education. Our findings suggest the potential value of integrating social media in teaching and learning activities to enhance students’ learning experience.
Highlights
Many studies had reported the use of social media for educational purposes in various health science disciplines (Robinson et al, 2013; de Peralta et al, 2019; Nguyen et al, 2021; Sharka et al, 2021)
A total of 244 undergraduate dental students participated in the study with a total of 67.8% response rate, and 100% response rate from third year students
There were no significant association between gender, year of study and type of internet access with the mean of social media usage for academic purposes
Summary
Many studies had reported the use of social media for educational purposes in various health science disciplines (Robinson et al, 2013; de Peralta et al, 2019; Nguyen et al, 2021; Sharka et al, 2021). Social media has served as a platform to improve and enhance online learning in delivering valuable information, participating in live presentation, or working as a platform in a group discussion for student (Gikas & Grant, 2013; Rasiah, 2014). With the improvement of digital technology and social media applications, the technology has become an essential communication tool for teaching and learning activities between the educators and students. Archives of Orofacial Sciences 2021; 16(2): 141–152 course contents and materials in order to create synchronous and asynchronous modes of teaching and learning (Endut et al, 2012). The online platform helps to improve and enhance on-campus teaching where it can deliver any online information to the students as supplement to the traditional teaching and learning approach (Bahner et al, 2012; Endut et al, 2012)
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