Social Media Use by Dental Hygiene Educators

Abstract

Purpose Social media can be an effective tool in health care education. The purpose of this study was to explore dental hygiene educators’ familiarity and use of social media platforms and to examine how social media was implemented in dental hygiene education.

Methods A 25-item questionnaire was designed to investigate the use of social media by dental hygiene educators. The instrument included demographic data and items addressing personal, professional, and educational use of twelve common social media sites and the respondents’ beliefs about social media using a 4-point Likert scale. The electronic questionnaire was distributed by email to 379 dental hygiene program directors in the United States and Canada. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data.

Results A total of 120 responses were received. While Facebook was the most utilized site for personal use (78.3%), LinkedIn was the most frequently accessed site for professional use (57.5%), and YouTube for educational use (68.3%). There was strong agreement that the interactive nature of online technologies create better learning environments (84.1%). There was also strong agreement that social media use in the classroom invites student participation (77.5%). More than half of the respondents (64.2%) indicated that social media can be an effective method for content delivery.

Conclusion Social media is highly utilized for personal use by dental hygiene educators, but less frequently for engagement purposes in the classroom.