Twitter: An Application to Encourage Information Seeking Among Nursing Students

Area of Science:

• Nursing Education
• Social Media in Healthcare

Background:

• Social networking applications like Twitter are underutilized in nursing education.
• There is a need to explore innovative tools to enhance student engagement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate Twitter's potential in stimulating nurse practitioner students' exploration of clinical and professional topics.
• To assess student engagement with Twitter-based learning materials.

Main Methods:

• Nurse practitioner students received instructor-generated tweets on relevant topics throughout a semester.
• Student engagement was measured by link-following behavior and post-semester feedback.

Main Results:

• 75% of students followed provided links to seek additional information.
• 87% of students desired continued access to Twitter-based content post-semester.

Conclusions:

• Twitter can be an effective tool for encouraging self-directed learning and topic exploration in nursing education.
• Nurse practitioner students show a high level of engagement and interest in using Twitter for academic purposes.