Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Jan 4, 2024
Date Accepted: Dec 17, 2024
New frontiers in Education: Instagram as a tool to improve Human Histology learning at the Medical School
ABSTRACT
Background:
Student development is currently taking place in an environment governed by new technologies and social media (SoMe). Some of them, such as Instagram or Facebook, have been incorporated as additional tools for teaching and learning processes in higher education, especially in the framework of image-based applied disciplines, including radiology and pathology, among others. Nevertheless, the role of SoMe in the teaching of core subjects such as Histology has hardly been studied, and there are very few reports on this issue.
Objective:
The aim of this work was to investigate the impact of implementing Social Media on Human Histology learning. For this purpose, a set of voluntary e-learning activities was shared on Instagram as a complement to traditional face-to-face teaching.
Methods:
The proposal included questionnaires based on multiple-choice tests (MCT), description of histological images and schematic diagrams about the subject contents. These activities were posted on an Instagram account only accessible for second-year medical students from the University of Malaga. In addition, students could share their own images taken during the laboratory practices and interact with their peers.
Results:
85.6% of the students enrolled in Human Histology 2 agreed to participate in the platform. Most of them valued positively the initiative and considered it as an adequate instrument to improve their final marks. Specifically, 68% of the student body regarded the MCT as the most useful activity. Interestingly, there were statistically significant differences between the marks of the final exam (without considering other evaluation activities) from students who participated in the activity versus those who did not (P<.001). There were no significant differences according to the degree of participation.
Conclusions:
These results evidence that the incorporation of SoMe may be considered as a useful, easy and accessible tool to improve the learning of Human Histology in the context of Medical Degrees.
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