The Digital Classroom: How to Leverage Social Media for Infectious Diseases Education

Abstract

Social media (SoMe) platforms have been increasingly used by infectious diseases (ID) learners and educators in recent years. This trend has only accelerated with the changes brought to our educational spaces by the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Given the increasingly diverse SoMe landscape, educators may find themselves struggling with how to effectively use these tools. In this Viewpoint we describe how to use SoMe platforms (e.g., Twitter, podcasts, and open-access online content portals) in medical education, highlight medical education theories supporting their use, and discuss how educators can engage with these learning tools effectively. We focus on how these platforms harness key principles of adult learning and provide a guide for educators in the effective use of SoMe tools in educating ID learners. Finally, we suggest how to effectively interact with and leverage these increasingly important digital platforms.

Keywords: digital strategy; infectious diseases; medical education; social media; virtual learning.

Figure 1.

Strengths and limitations of commonly used social media platforms. An infographic is a concise and clear visual representation of information that explains a complex topic, provides an overview of a subject matter, or summarizes content. A poll function can be used in creating multiple-choice questions.

Figure 2.

Methods of social media engagement. This can be seen as a menu of options, with choice of specific activities depending on the goals of the educator and learner. For “consume,” practitioners can view content, like posts, or follow a hashtag. Hashtags (signified by the # symbol) allow indexing of content, making it easily searchable. For “disseminate,” educators/learners can promote content, curate content for their own curricula, or share content (e.g., retweeting on Twitter). For “discuss,” practitioners can comment on posts or ask questions and join virtual chats or journal clubs. Finally, for “create,” both educators and learners can create video or audio podcasts, design infographics, or post clinical pearls on social media platforms.

Figure 3.

Summary of the types of social media (SoMe) engagement with associated best practices. Hashtags (signified by the # symbol) allow indexing of content, making it easily searchable. Tagging (signified by the @ symbol) calls the attention of a social media account holder (e.g., content expert). An infographic is a concise and clear visual representation of information that explains a complex topic, provides an overview of a subject matter, or summarizes content. “Tweetorial” is a term used in Twitter to refer to a series of posts (tweets) that are connected to each other to form a tutorial or a minilecture about a topic.

Figure 4.

Summary of social media (SoMe) medical education principles, including self-directed learning [14], technology-enhanced learning [15], communities of practice [16], and cognitive learning strategies [17].