Assessment of the incorporation of a virtual forum through social media among Chilean dental students

Abstract

Introduction: Social networks are increasingly used in education due to its ease of use, familiarization, accessibility, making it possible to exchange information instantly and easily from smartphones. For this reason, a virtual forum was designed and created through a closed group of Facebook that worked in parallel with the subject. Objective: To evaluate the opinion of students in relation to the development of attitudinal, cognitive, self-regulatory and metacognitive skills through the virtual forum implemented, as well as their perception regarding the Facebook platform. Methodology: Cross-sectional descriptive study of mixed type. Quantitative with the application of a Likert opinion survey created by Andrei Fedorov (2008) and qualitative through four focus groups. 68 students participated (28 men and 40 women), who took the Integrated Diagnostic course in 2017, corresponding to 100% of them. Results: For 70% of the questions, the most selected option was -quite-; except for four of the attitudinal dimension where the most frequent was -a little-. They highlighted the Facebook platform as an excellent idea to encourage learning, offering more advantages than other platforms. The mentioned disadvantages arose from students with less participation and regular / low performance. Conclusion: The virtual forum, through Facebook, allowed to improve the attitudinal, cognitive, self-regulating and metacognitive dimensions, mainly in women and in those who participated more, obtaining better performance. It turned out to be a better virtual platform given that it is friendly, massive and instantaneous which encourages student motivation.