Assessment and role of social media in dental education

Abstract

This study conducts a survey with voluntary predoctoral dental students who had experience using a variety of dental applications (Apps) and social media in their dental education. The target group was fourth- yearpredoctoral dental students. Amongst 60, 20 students (33.3%) are those who expected an overall increase of 2-3% in their academic score and 30 students (50%) expected an increase of 5-8% in their score and 6.6% that is 4 students expected an increase of 10-12% and 6 students (10%) are those who expected more than 12% increase in their academic score.20 students (33.3%) thought that social media has impacted the outcome of the result and the rest 40 (66.6%) thought that social media had not impacted the result. We found that 40 students (66.6%) spent 2-3 hours on WhatsApp, 10 students (16.6%) spent 4-6 hours and 8 students (13.3%) spent 7-9 hours on WhatsApp. Only 2 students (3.33%) spent more than 10 hours on WhatsApp. This digital media has helped us in expanding our knowledge and learning things which we are not aware of, without this media.