Working with and working for the community: learning about health promotion through community engagement

Abstract

and students the remaining 84.7% of the sample. Results highlighted different practice preferences between educators and students. For example, 47.8% of the educators reported ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ using social media, with only 28.1% using it ‘often’ or ‘almost always’. In contrast 18.2% of students reported ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ using social media and 55.3% reported using it ‘often’ or ‘almost always’. Educators reported using social media to predominantly share learning resources (31.8%), deliver audio-visual materials to learners (28.4%) and to facilitate interactive learning (27.3%). In contrast students reported using it primarily as a tool to share resources (57.3%), to share opinions or frustrations related to coursework with other students (50.8%) and for exam preparation (50.7%). Conclusion(s): Educators are less likely to use social media to facilitate learning and might not be optimising the use of this tool to communicate effectively with students. Educators need to decide if they want to harness the educational potential of social media to promote professional knowledge, skills and attributes or if they want to leave social media to students who can organise and operate their own community of learners, independent of educators. Implications: This data suggests that effort needs to be directed to educating the educators on best practice in the use of social media. The need for further policy development and policy translation to guide behaviour is also recommended. Finally, it may be time to shift from a So-Me view of social media to a “So-Us’ ie SOcial media UtiliSation in education that promotes its use for more than a small group of tech savvy health science educators and students.