NURSING STUDENTS PERSPECTIVE TOWARD THE ROLE OF VIRTUAL SOCIAL NETWORKS ON THEIR ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT IN TABRIZ UNIVERSITY OF MEDICAL SCIENCES

Virtual social networks have become an unrivaled means in the field of information and communication technology and are one of the effective factors plays an important role in the academic achievement of students in today's modern world. Accordingly, this study aimed to determine nursing student's perspective toward the role of virtual social networks on their academic achievement.
This study was a descriptive survey conducted on 356 nursing students in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2017. The participants were recruited using stratified random sampling. A researcher-made questionnaire was used for collecting data. Descriptive statistics were applied to the data by SPSS ver. 13 Software.
while the majority of the participants expressed that virtual social networks have had a constructive and positive role in both "inquiry" and "assignment writing" domains, they disclosed that virtual social networks were destructive in the two other "grade promotion" and "concentration" domains of academic achievement. Also, from the student's perspective, virtual social networks have had a neutral impact on the "academic motivation".
It is a necessary requirement for officials of nursing education and other stakeholders to adopt preplanned measures in line with guiding the students to make the most of the positive points of virtual social networks and to prevent potential pitfalls and malicious consequences that their misuse could bring with them.