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Jain T.1, Kynaston A.1
1Northern Arizona University, Physical therapy and Athletic Training, Flagstaff, United States
Background: Educators are tasked with the challenge of limited classroom time and keeping students engaged and satisfied, while ensuring that a high level of learning is taking place. With advances in technology, social media landscape has exploded in recent years and has transformed the way we interact with each other and learn new content. Many college courses now utilize online discussion boards to supplement in-class student learning. Though learning management systems such as Blackboard and Moodle allow an easy integration of various social media services (e.g., Twitter), few courses harness the power of this medium to engage and enhance student learning. Though twitter has been shown to improve teacher-student interactions and lifelong learning behavior, twitter, as a teaching and learning tool, has been narrowly used in physical therapy classrooms. This pilot study was important in order to establish whether twitter can be used as an educational tool, as well as support development of physical therapy students.
Purpose: To explore and compare the role of twitter in increasing student learning and engagement to traditional online discussion on Blackboard Learn (BbLearn). In addition, satisfaction and perception of the different discussion methods were explored.
Methods: Forty-seven students (age, 23.5±5.3 years) enrolled in the Therapeutic Exercise course in the entry-level Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) program at Northern Arizona University during the period from JanuaryMay 2015 participated in this study. Students were introduced to the basics of twitter chat/terminology and assisted in creating twitter accounts during the introductory class. Five twitter and BbLearn discussion sessions were conducted and alternated each week to discuss the course material covered in that respective week. A Likert scale survey assessed satisfaction and perception of the different discussion methods. The number of twitter chats, replies, and re-tweets or BbLearn posts were counted for each student to indicate engagement. Performance on the final exam was used to assess learning of the course content related to both the BbLearn discussion and twitter chat sessions. Frequency data and Wilcoxon test were used to analyze the data.
Results: There was a significant difference in satisfaction between different discussion methods (p=0.014) based on preferred discussion method; students who prefer twitter discussions were more satisfied and students who prefer BbLearn discussion posts were less satisfied. When asked to select a preferred discussion method between BbLearn and Twitter, 68% selected Twitter, and 32% selected BbLearn. The students engagement on Twitter and BbLearn was significantly different (p 0.0001), with students posting almost twice as much during Twitter discussions weeks when compared to Bblearn discussions. No significant difference was found for learning based on the performance in the final exam (p>0.05).
Conclusion(s): Students had increased satisfaction and a higher level of engagement with discussions done on twitter when compared to discussions done on BbLearn. More research is needed to determine the role of twitter on development of cognitive/meta-cognitive and learning skills in physical therapy students.
Implications: Based on these findings, educators in physical therapy programs should consider using twitter as an effective and engaging medium for course discussions.
Funding acknowledgements: This work was unfunded.
Topic: Education: methods of teaching & learning
Ethics approval: The study was approved by the Institutional Review Board at the Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA. (Study ID: 697715)
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
