Alyson Brown – @alybrown
Brian Addison – @brianaddison75
Katie MacLure – James Andrews – Derek Stewart and Sarah Pederson co-authors
RGU Aberdeen
During the 2015-16 academic session, academic staff at RGU collaborated with the WePharmacist Network to explore the use of social media and the Network. Each year, final year UG students undertake a research project which contributes to their final degree award. To explore the research area, a group of 8 students were supported to use Twitter as their data collection method.
Methods: two one-hour hosted twitter chats were held in December 2015 via the #WePh network. Questions were developed in line with the WeNetwork guidelines (#WeCommunities), informed by existing literature (Cain and Romanelli 2009; Grindrod et al 2014) and discussion with the #WePh moderator and reviewed by an expert panel. Students participated in training prior to data collection and all research was carried out in accordance with RGU Ethics and Governance processes and AOIR Ethics guidelines . The research was also approved by the School of Pharmacy and Life Sciences Ethics Committee.
Results: Themes of e-professionalism and online privacy emerged as concerns, however the benefits of using social media for education, networking and career development were discussed throughout both data collection ‘chats’ in particular, due to the accessibility of both information and ‘people’. The results from the study are in line with existing literature (Cain and Romanelli 2009; Gettig et al 2013; Grindrod et al 2014; Hall et al 2013; Ness et al 2014), however this study also highlighted personal experiences of ‘trolling’ and how this has affected how users interact with social media as a result. In addition, participants also discussed how they were using Twitter as a career tool and in particular, how this has resulted in collaborative outcomes.
Student engagement: Students involved in the project initially were hesitant in their use of social media. None of the 8 participants used social media as a professional tool and all were unsure of its use as a data collection method. Students engaged with the research project, requiring little supervision and utilised Twitter successfully to collect their data. Students have also made recommendations on how to address and encourage the use of social media by undergraduate students which will now become the focus of a student enhancement research project in the next academic session.
Staff reflections: Twitter as a data collection tool
Twitter and the #WePharmacist network was selected for this research project to explore a specific aspect of this SoMe platform – hosted networks and their perceived benefits for healthcare professionals. This method was of benefit as it allowed the research team to access participants without the barrier of geographical location and as a result, gathered rich data from pharmacists worldwide. Each of the chats had over 2million impressions also demonstrating the benefit of openly hosting this discussion in the Twitter environment. Whilst the researchers acknowledge that the limit of 140 characters may have influenced how the respondents answered the questions, the ability to interact with professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds and the number of participants in the ‘chats’ gave way to rich data collected throughout the duration of the hosted chats.
References:
Cain, J. and Romanelli, F., 2009. E-professionalism: a new paradigm for a digital age. Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning, 1(2), pp. 66-70
Gettig, J.P., Lee, N. and Fjortoft, N., 2013. Student and faculty observations and perceptions of professionalism in online domain scenarios. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 77(9), pp. 192-192
Grindrod, K., Forgione A., Tsuyuki RT., Gavura S., Giustini D., 2014. Pharmacy 2.0: a scoping review of social media use in pharmacy. Research In Social & Administrative Pharmacy: RSAP, 10(1), pp. 256-270
Hall, M., Hanna, L. and Huey, G., 2013. Use and views on social networking sites of pharmacy students in the United kingdom. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 77(1), pp. 9-9
Ness, G.L., Sheehan, A.H. and Synder, M.E., 2014. Graduating student pharmacists’ perspectives on e-professionalism and social media: qualitative findings. Journal Of The American Pharmacists Association: Japha, 54(2), pp. 138-143
#WeCommunities (2015) About (website). Available from: http://www.wecommunities.org/about [Accessed 07 August 2015]