The use of social media as a tool to educate United Kingdom undergraduate pharmacy students about public health

Abstract

Background and purpose: The role of community pharmacists (CPs) in England now includes public health service delivery, which is deemed to be an essential pharmacy service. Pharmacy students need "real-life" experience to develop the skills required. A blended learning approach incorporating offline and online elements may be effective. In particular, using social media (SM) as a teaching tool could have dual benefits-students are engaged in a medium that they enjoy using and they learn how to use SM in a professional way while interacting with the general public. This study aimed to evaluate pharmacy students' perceptions of SM as a learning tool and to investigate if workplace skills could be imbedded into a coursework assignment. Educational activity and setting: Final year Kingston University MPharm students (N=120) were divided into 10 groups for a coursework assignment. They had to deliver an offline (at the Penrhyn Road campus) and online (via social media) public health campaign on an assigned topic. Each group had a different public health topic. Following the campaign, students delivered an oral presentation and created a poster to showcase their campaign content and strategy. Elements assessed included the campaign stand, SM page, oral presentation, poster and peer score. Students also completed a survey. The survey consisted of 16 questions divided into four sections. Data were analysed in SPSS® software. Chi-squared was used to test statistical significance (P<0.05 was significant). Findings: The response rate for the survey was 65% (78/120). Over half (51.3%) preferred the selfdirected learning aspect of the assignment while 28.2% preferred the delivery of the campaign and use of SM. Students noted that they had developed team working, communication and creativity skills. Most (93.6%) agreed that SM was an effective tool when learning about public health. Many noted that they learned through post-creation (93.6%) and through viewing posts created by others (88.5%). The mean overall score for the public health campaign was 75.4% and 73.2% for the oral presentation. Students achieved higher scores for their SM pages than they did for their oral presentation. However, that difference was not statistically significant. Summary: A blended learning approach proved to be an effective way to teach final year pharmacy 2 students about public health topics. Most students indicated that they had developed the skills required to be independent learners. Students also developed workplace skills that will be useful in their roles as pharmacists. SM was noted as an effective tool to learn about public health. The future pharmacy workforce needs to be sufficiently digitally literate to help the public to safely navigate the health information available on social media. A public health assignment, such as the one described here, is an effective way to support pharmacy students to learn how to use this medium appropriately to support healthy lifestyles.

Blended learning technologies for a foreign language teaching the students of non-philological majors

“…In our opinion, this is due to the specific features of the communication process itself. We consider it appropriate to supplement blended learning with various communication forms in a foreign language through online services and social media (Crilly & Kayyali, 2019; Lo pez-Carril et al, 2020; Manca, 2020). We use Google Hangouts primarily, as it is already integrated with the Google Classroom platform.…”

A Neoteric Approach toward Social Media in Public Health Informatics: A Narrative Review of Current Trends and Future Directions

“…Artificial intelligence (AI) is an evolving tool that has been utilized in medicine and healthcare in the past years [30]. AI uses several methods like computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning for pattern recognition, prediction, and data analysis.…”

“…AI uses several methods like computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning for pattern recognition, prediction, and data analysis. For these reasons, researchers have suggested that AI has the potential to improve public health [30]. A study conducted in the United Kingdom in 2021 explored how AI enables social media analysis on Facebook and Twitter for use in contact-tracing apps [31].…”

A Neoteric Approach toward Social Media in Public Health Informatics: A Narrative Review of Current Trends and Future Directions

“…Artificial intelligence (AI) is an evolving tool that has been utilized in medicine and healthcare in the past years [31]. AI uses several methods like computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning for pattern recognition, prediction, and data analysis.…”

“…AI uses several methods like computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning for pattern recognition, prediction, and data analysis. For these reasons, researchers have suggested that AI has the potential to improve public health [31]. A study conducted in the United Kingdom in 2021 explored how AI enables social media analysis on Facebook and Twitter for contact-tracing apps use [32].…”