International Journal of Nursing

The Impact of Social Media on Social Presence and Student Satisfaction in Nursing Education
Holly Hollis, Rick Houser

Abstract
The purpose of this study was to determine if social media can enhance the student’s learning experience by employing a medium in which they are already comfortable and familiar, and interact with on a daily basis. This study involved assessing 49 nursing students who used social media, or Facebook to be more exact, compared to when they used a traditional online learning platform. A counterbalanced research design, where participants were randomly assigned to systematically varying sequences of conditions, was used for the study, allowing for two groups of students to experience both social media and a traditional online learning platform over the course of 12 weeks of the 15-week semester. Undergraduate nursing students who used the online learning platform for the first six weeks and then began using social media combined with the traditional online platform for the last six weeks, scored significantly higher in social presence than the group that started with social media during the first six weeks. Implications for nurse education are discussed.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijn.v2n1a3