Abstract:

Twitter is presented as “microblogging platform” and raises some uses in higher education in Physiotherapy Degree according to the suggestion in the literature. Along with this we review some applications that extend the basic functionality of Twitter: tools for analysis, multimedia implementations and search, among other. Twitter, is listed in the top 100 of the most important current educational resources in the European Higher Education Area. In the University of Seville and the degree in physical therapy, is used actively in Fundamentals of physiotherapy, Physiotherapy Intervention in Management and Physiotherapy in Physical Therapy Paediatrics and this paper present the main results of a study in which we have collected data from students from first to fourth degree in physiotherapythey have used twitter in the above-mentioned subjects.

The main objective of this study is to know what are the uses that students consider how more interesting or appropriate the use of twitter in their teaching-learning process, affecting aspects considered that they are more positive of this educational tool and what are the most negative.

Descriptive, observational and transversal study from January 2015 to February 2015. Sample 164 students (108 women, 56 men; Middle aged 19.5) of the degree in physiotherapy (convenience sampling) configured enrolled in the subjects of fundamentals of physiotherapy (first course), physiotherapy intervention in management (third year) and physiotherapy in paediatrics (fourth year). The measuring instrument was a questionnaire Lickert of 30 items valued from 0 to 5, where 0 is "totally disagree" and 5 is "totally in agreement". In addition, there was a "focus group" with 15 students selected among users of twitter guests of this study. Quantitative data were analyzed with the SPSS 21.0 package and qualitative with Atlas ti 6.0.

The main results provide more than 50% of the sample is "agreement" or "completely agree" in considering the twitter use in physiotherapy because they perceive the class as a group with similar interests "class as a community" (85%), "microblogging" (77%), interrelation between subjects (71%), promoting discussion and communication with Faculty Forum (53%). Likewise, highlights that twitter is positive because it changes the dynamics of classes (84%), fun (65%) and is a tool of development professional (57%). Also, that twitter is negative by having limited potential of writing (53%) and receive 'spam' (51%) followers.

As a conclusion, we can say that physiotherapy students are very receptive to the use of twitter in their teaching-learning process, being able to identify positive and negative aspects in their use, but emphasizing that twitter is for them a network to share peer and for more fun with the contents of the subjects and teachers to connect, although there are still students in the Physical Therapy Degree who don´t use twitter as a learning tool, issue that we hope to improve in the future.

Keywords:

Twitter, european hight education, innovation, physiotherapist, e-learning.