(2138) THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL NETWORKS ON THE RESEARCH IN EDUCATION: CASE STUDY

摘要

The training of Pharmaceutics and their curricular updating are necessary to strengthen theprofessional performance once the degree studies have been finished. This performance is connectedto the relevance of the competences in the labor market. This implies the design of research projectsin education that allow the Pharmacy Curricula and Programs to feed back. One of the main elementsin this type of studies is the opinion of the graduates. Therefore, the orchestration of these opinions isextremely important. In the same way, locating the graduates by a directory is needed to applysurveys that feed back the Pharmaceutical training programs with their experiences on the labourmarket. The strategies aimed to attract graduates present difficulties and seem to take too long. Someexamples of these strategies are personal contact, contact with enterprises and employers, mail andinvitation to events. The implementation of the TICs in an educational field began as an innovativeway that allowed the possibility of connecting in a quick and accessible way, aiming to expandknowledge, learning and a series of interpersonal skills such as communication. Connectivity is theapplication of the network?s principles to spread both knowledge and learning process. The networkshave always existed. So that their study and knowledge make us be able to define the main structuresof the network, the behavior pattern and the information flow. Taking into account all their advantages,it was decided to use social networks as a strategy of communication with the Pharmacy Graduates toobtain information, to implement instruments, to update the directory and to exchange information withthem.The creation of the social network achieved to get in contact with 156 CPB Graduates of the 2005-2008 years, that means 35.9% of the total (434 graduates), for 6 months. By means of the socialnetwork, 40 graduates responded to the instrument, that is the equivalent to a 25.6%. The sum up ofall the means used to implement the instrument corresponds to 32%, where the social network hasbeaten the methods of personal contact and e-mailing at collecting information. At the same time,several membership requests from graduates of other years (from the oldest one of 1976) have beenreceived, being a total of 363 graduates or 11.2% of the total amount of the Graduates of CPB-FESZ.The social networks turned out to be a strategic and useful tool to research in education, for themonitoring of graduates. They have allowed getting in touch with people without any track from theirgraduation. Furthermore, they contribute to the interaction through chat, to the employment exchange,and to the availability of information about continuous training and events among the connectedgraduates.