Perception and Use of Web 2.0 Applications by Medical Students of Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma

1. Introduction

Web 2.0 is the second stage of development of the internet, characterized especially by the change from static web page to dynamic user-generated content and the growth of social media. Fuller (2011) describe web 2.0 “as the changing face of people’s activities on the web, from a mere place to access and read information towards a much cooler place to create/write/share/collaborate/network with their intellectual involvement”. He continued by saying web 2.0 is changing all aspects of academic life including practice and training of medicine. Web 2.0 was created by O’Reilley media during a conference brainstorming session 2004. In more concrete, Web 2.0 is a term used to refer to groups of web-based applications that are more communicative in nature then. The whole idea surrounding web 2.0 development and upgrade of existing web like web 1.0 in order to create room not only for the web designer to make the whole comment and sharing of it but rather as well give the users/people the same privilege to create, share, collaborate and interact with web-based applications like Facebook, wiki’s etc.

Web 2.0 has the potential to create more interactive and powerful leading environment in which learners become knowledge creators, producers, editors, and evaluators (Richardson, 2009). Since the students of this generation are termed digital natives, educators have suggested that web 2.0 tools should be integrated into high education. The deployment of web 2.0 technologies to support the academic purpose cannot be over emphasized because it has provided enabling environment and offered opportunities for learners (students and lecturers) to communicate and aggravate knowledge. There is no doubting the fact that the academic environments in Nigeria are becoming transformed with the use of web 2.0 and other emerging new technologies. The changes in the web via web 2.0 applications have been brought to all areas of academic life. It has been viewed by some researchers that the current generation of students entering universities and colleges use web 2.0 applications like Wikis, blogs, RSS, podcasting, and social networking in their daily lives. Some were on the ground that the perceptions of students towards web 2.0 applications/technologies have superseded that of their professors because the students of this generation are referred to as “mobile students”.

Perception is defined as recognition and interpretation of sensory information. It can be said that perception is a process where we take in sensory information from our environment and use that information in order to interact with our environment. That is, it allows us to take sensory information in and make it into something meaningful. Perception of web 2.0 simply means the recognition and interpretation of web 2.0 applications. It is the conscious understanding of web 2.0 applications. Alsaady (2007) noted that the rapidly growing technology infrastructure at institutions of higher education to meet the instructional and research needs of faculty, staff, and students is making faculty development with the use of technology becoming mandatory requirement. Individual perception of web 2.0 determines the utilization of its applications. For instance, an individual who sees Facebook as a platform for meeting and chatting with friends/customers, exhibiting and marketing of products and other individuals who sees it as platform for meeting and charting with friends only will not have the same utilization value. Though they both realize it’s a platform, but their perception defer as such the utilization will defer as well. According to Franklin (2008), the use of social software and Web 2.0 tools for knowledge sharing across the sector could reduce the costs and risks involved in decision making and implementation of T&L software, gadgetry and hardware.

The use of web 2.0 applications denotes the exploiting/employing web 2.0 applications for service or taking advantage of web 2.0 applications for service. The new wave in the internet has broken new grounds for Finding and retrieving information and as such end-user has become information-independent. Maloney (2007) opines that with the use of Web 2.0, people no longer access the web only for specific actions, such as accessing the content; instead they access and create collective knowledge through social interactions. Educators suggest that Web 2.0 tools should be integrated into higher education on the note that “Digital natives” expect to learn with new technologies and as such prepare them for the workplace of the future. It must be stated that web 2.0 promotes student-centered learning and users have been observed to have an enhanced capacity to self-organization. It was also claimed by Haigh (2010) that Nurse Lecturers are becoming more aware of the opportunities that Web 2.0 offers and are slowly moving into the World of cyber-teaching. It is very clear that Web 2.0 is changing the style of academic life including practice and training of Medical practitioners. Academic Institutions, Hospitals, Libraries, Publishers, E-Learning Vendors, Search Engines, Media, literarily all walks of life are implementing Web 2.0 technologies to serve the needs of “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”. It has also affected the medical practitioners and students in such a way that they can’t stay without its application.

Medical students are individuals who practice becoming physicians. They are those individuals who are in the field of examining and accessing a person physical health or fitness. Nowadays, using the internet is not only limited to information searching. Medical students have also seen that web 2.0 technologies/applications have provided a new way of using the internet for collaborating and interacting with others in their discipline. Researchers have revealed that the use of web 2.0 applications in education has not been maximized due to some setting challenges. The way information is shared with the web 2.0 applications, has improve the ubiquitous availability of timely information to support learning and facilitate research even in the medical field. It is clear that web 2.0 tools are facilitating tools that enable medical students to carry out their academic endeavours towards scholarship. But most of the institutions have not perceived the importance of this web 2.0 in an academic world. To this end, the study will find out the perception and use of web 2.0 by medical students in Ambrose Alli University (AAU).

2. Literature Review

3. Methods

Survey research design was adopted for this study. Leedy and Omrod (2010) posited that survey research involves acquiring information about one or more groups of people. It is done by asking them questions and tabulating their answers. The ultimate goal is to learn about a large population by surveying a sample of that population. The reason why this study adopted survey method is because it involves systematic and comprehensive way of collecting and documenting existing community conditions, characteristics of a population, and community opinions. The method of data analysis adopted for this study was the mean, standard deviation and frequency counts all represented with charts and tables. The reason of this was to help the researcher see the similarities and relationship of the data and compare results. The study population of this research comprises medical students in college of medicine at Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma such as Faculty of Basic Medical Sciences-FBM (Department of Anatomy- ANA, Department of Medical Laboratory Science -MLS, Department of Nursing Sciences-NSG, and Department of Physiology-PYS) and Faculty of Clinical Sciences-FCS (Department of Medicine- MED). Purposive sampling was adopted for this study. This is because the researcher intends to study a group of interest that are of typical which will provide the best answers to the research questions.

A total of three hundred and sixty-seven (367) copies of questionnaire were distributed for this study but three hundred and twenty-one 321(87.5%) were retrieved. Out of the 321 collected, some of the items were not responded to by the respondents and as such considered missing by the softer ware used. Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) software version 19 was used to analyze the data collected into frequency count, percentages.

4. Results

4.1 Personal Information of the Respondents

Table 1.

Analysis of distributed, retrieved and unturned questionnaires

As seen from the fig. 1, the majority of participants from the total of 321 came from the department of Medical Laboratory Science with 78(24.3%), Physiology with 74(23.1%), Medicine with 70(21.8%), Nursing with 70(21.8%) while the lowest percent of participants came from Anatomy department with 29(9.0%).

Fig. 1.

Results of Demographic Data - Department & Age

The age range or group of the participant as seen in the fig. 1, indicate that the majority of the respondents belong to the age group of 21-25 with 136 (42.4%), 16-20 with 87 (27.1%), 26-30 with 82(25.5%) while the lowest of the respondents belong to the age group of 31-above with 16(5.0%).

The fig. 2 showed that 173(53.9%) respondents were female, while 148 (46.1%) were male. This result revealed that majority of participants came from female respondents.

Fig. 2.

Results of Demographic Data - Gender

4.2 Answers to Research Questions

4.2.1 Research Question one: What kind of web 2.0 application do you use?

Fig. 3 showed that item 1, 2, and 3 with the mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =1.8006, 1.6965, and1.8875) respectively are Adequately Used by medical students of AAU base on the fact that mean score is above the average mean of 1.50, while item 4-12 are Not Adequately Used by medical students of AAU as their mean scores is below the average mean of 1.50. This analysis revealed that majority of the respondents don’t use web 2.0 applications adequately.

Fig. 3.

Web 2.0 Application Use

4.2.2 Research question two: To what extent do you use the web 2.0 applications/tools?

Fig. 4 showed that item 3 with mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =4.0064) is used at a very high extent, because the mean score is above the range mean of 3.99. Item 1, 2, and 6 with the mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =3.9489, 3.5119, and3.7682) respectively are used at high extent by medical students of AAU base on the fact that mean range is above the range mean of 3.09, item 4,5,7,8,10,11, and 12 with the mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =2.4836,2.4836, 2.2119,2.0695, 2.1518, 2.0099, 2.4967) are used at low extent considering the range mean that is below 3.00, while item 9 with the mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =1.8355) is used at a very high extent by medical students of AAU as their mean scores is below range mean 2.00. This analysis revealed that majority of the respondents indicated that they use web applications like Tag, podcast Flickr, slideshare, iTunes, crocodoc, grammarly 4share at low extent.

Fig. 4.

Extent of use of web 2.0 applications

4.2.3 Research question three: Why do you use web 2.0 applications/tools?

Criterion mean:
Strongly Agree =4
Agree =3
Disagree =2
Strongly Disagree =1
　　　Average mean (4+3+2+1=10 / 4 = 2.50)

Mean score 2.50 above was accepted while 2.49 and below was rejected. Mean values of ranging from 1.00 - 1.49 indicated strongly disagree, the mean value of 1.50 -2.49 indicated disagree, 2.50 - 3.49 indicated agree, while 3.50 - 4.00 indicated strongly agree.

Table 2 revealed that item 1 with the mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =3.6349) was strongly agreed to by the respondents base on the fact the mean score is above the range mean of 3.49. Item 3-10 with mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =3.3622, 3.2300, 3.3962, 3.3419, 3.3802, 3.1278, 3.1290, 3.1470) respectively was agreed to by the respondents base on the fact that the mean scores were above the range mean of 2.49, while item 2 with the mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =1.9551) was disagreed to as the mean score is below the range mean of 2.50. This finding revealed that majority of the respondents agreed to the purpose for use enumerated in the above table.

Table 2.

Reason for Use web 2.0 applications/tools

4.3 Research question four: What are your perceptions on web 2.0 applications/tools?

Criterion mean:
Strongly Agree =4
Agree =3
Disagree =2
Strongly Disagree =1
　　　Average mean (4+3+2+1=10 / 4 = 2.50)

Mean score 2.50 above was accepted while 2.49 and below was rejected. Mean values of ranging from 1.00 - 1.49 indicated strongly disagree, the mean value of 1.50 -2.49 indicated disagree, 2.50 - 3.49 indicated agree, while 3.50 - 4.00 indicated strongly agree.

Table 3 revealed that item 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9, and 10 with mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =3.4377, 3.2204, 3.0863, 3.1917, 3.0639, 3.3195, 3.0383, 3.0511, 2.8585) respectively agreed to by the respondents base on the fact that the mean scores were above the range mean of 2.49, while item 5 with the mean score ($$ \overline{X}$$ =1.8626) was disagreed to as the mean score is below the range mean of 2.50. This analysis revealed majority of the respondents agreed to the perceptions outlined in table 4.7.

Table 3.

perceptions on web 2.0 applications/tools

5. Summary of Findings

Arising from this study, the findings are as follows:

• ⅰ. The demographic data of the respondents, findings show that majority of female responded to the study, more of respondents fall in between the age of 21-25 years, also majority of the respondents are from the department of Medical Laboratory Science.
• ⅱ. The web 2.0 applications use, findings from the analysis show that medical students use more of web 2.0 application like social network (Facebook, WhatsApp, twitter etc), YouTube, wiki. While Podcast, Tag, Social bookmarking, Flicker, Slideshare, 4share, Itunes, Crocodoc, and Grammarly are less used.
• ⅲ. The extent of use of web 2.0 applications, finding revealed that medical students use of social network (Facebook, WhatsApp, twitter etc), YouTube, and wiki are at high extent. While podcast, RSS, flickr at low extent.
• ⅳ. It has been discovered that medical students use web 2.0 tools for the purpose of solving assignment, sharing information/ knowledge, Reading/ Writing, accessing online journals/article, interacting with other medical students outside AAU, social activities (fun, games etc), flexible access to wide range of instructional materials, grammar checking, and Research work.
• ⅴ. It was discovered that medical students perceived web 2.0 applications as applications that keep them updated about class, allows them to interact with other medical students, enable them to create and edit medical content, present them with the opportunity to develop online learning environment as medical students, abreast them of current findings, allows them access to medical articles and contribute their quota of knowledge to medical content by commenting, and it should be integrated into medical field to enhance their academic activities/ purposes.

6. Conclusion

The literature survey has given an insight into the research carried out in the current field of study. The study showed that the use of the web 2.0 has helped to solve many problems in the 21^st century. However, it is clear that students in Nigerian universities especially medical students of Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma are not utilizing web 2.0 applications at high extent, some are not even aware, nor use many of the applications for academic purposes like the students in the developed countries where previous studies found that medical students are familiar and are utilizing web 2.0 tools in their academic pursuit. However, medical students perceived that web 2.0 applications will be of help to them in their discipline and as such that web 2.0 application should be fully integrated into academic activities.

7. Recommendations

Arising from the findings and conclusion are the following recommendations:

• ⅰ. Medical Students should be provided with the facilities in a format more familiar to them and used by most of them
• ⅱ. Educators and faculties need to understand that web 2.0 tools will add value to their teaching and learning process.
• ⅲ. Faculties also should be trained with a new emphasis as learners in a rapidly changing environment.
• ⅳ. Learning with web 2.0, institutions needs to equip their learning environment with the needed facilities which will be of utmost benefit even for future purposes.

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