JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Due to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020, the cancellation of in-person learning activities forced every aspect of medical education and student engagement to pivot to a virtual format, including activities supporting the performance and dissemination of scholarly work. While social media has been utilized to augment in-person conference learning, it has not been utilized as the sole platform for scholarly abstract presentations.

Objective:

Provide a platform that allows for synchronized, real-time dissemination of medical student scholarly work using only social media as a platform.

Methods:

The Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University launched an asynchronous Medical Student Scholarship forum using Twitter as a platform for students to present scholarly work and prepare for future virtual presentations. Posts were developed using a standardized template including a weblink to individual poster presentations. Tweets were released over five days and analytic data were collected on the Twitter platform.

Results:

: During the conference, a total of 63 tweets promoting the work of 58 students (55 medical, 3 dental) were published over 5 days. During the forum and the following week, tweets from the @BrodyDistinctly Twitter account received 63,142 impressions and 7,487 engagements, including 187 retweets, 1427 likes, and 2082 media engagements.

Conclusions:

Utilizing Twitter as a means of scholarly dissemination resulted in a larger viewing community than a traditional in-person event. Early evidence suggests that social media platforms may be an alternative to traditional scholarly presentations. Presenting via Twitter allowed students to receive instantaneous feedback and effectively network with wider academic communities. Additional research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of knowledge uptake, feedback, and networking.