Using Facebook for Medical Education: Will Students Respond?

ABSTRACT

There is little information about the willingness of medical students to participate in Facebook for education. I analyzed my interactions with students for the past 14 months to estimate the quantity of student interaction. A Facebook Group was created. Students friend requests were accepted, but “friending” was never solicited. Questions were created around a clinical situation and posted. Forty questions were posted. 5/40 questions were about physics/chemistry. 24 questions focused on basic medical sciences. 11 questions were primarily about clinical medicine. In fourteen months, 533/810 (66%) college students joined the Group. In all, 163/533 students (30%) responded at least once. Half of all responses were comments; the rest were clicks on the “like” button. The average number of responses was 9.5 unique students/question. If participation is voluntary, and targeted students are large in number, one can expect about 66% of students to become members of a site, and about 30% of these to interact. For any given question posted on the site, about 2% of members will respond, regardless of the nature of question clinically oriented or basic.