Table 3 Participants’ experiences using social media for informal learning purposes

Creating community

I think [social media] helps, especially as a distance student because you don’t have that same in-person classroom connection to begin with that at least when there’s a platform, whether it’s my group on WhatsApp or the, you know, larger program, larger page group on Facebook that we can connect, we can ask questions, get responses within seconds, minutes, or hours. Um, there’s a feeling of camaraderie, um, that we wouldn’t have as distance students, um, just because we’re all having similar experiences, similar frustrations, similar challenges, um, and we’re sharing that so it’s very relatable (P2)

I, we do have, um, more social [groups] for, um, like our year so like Nursing 2020 ‘cause I’ll be graduating this year. We have a Facebook platform where we’re able to, um, just talk about like questions in class or if we’re like, say we’re doing presentations we can post our notes for our presentation, um, so it’s like external resources that we’re going to use or if, even social things like buy your formal ticket or like, buy, we have nursing clothing orders. Or, hey, we’re doing this mixer, come and, like, join us for it. Things like that too so it’s kind of both…. like an academic purpose and also, like, social, get involved in the… nursing community (P1)

‘Behind the scenes’ knowledge sharing

We all share textbooks so I might buy a textbook for $20 and then at the end of the semester as long as the same edition is being used, I turn around and sell it for $20. Um, so we’re buying and selling and shipping textbooks all the time, um, which is pretty cool, rather than having to buy or rent them, so I mean there’s a cost benefit to it (P2)

We were able to get a lot of insight from people who were ahead of us in school and then also provide guidance for people who were just starting so like people would ask which professors to take or which courses, um, were interesting, like for electives (P3)

If there was somebody from the university who went and poked through, you know, went and poked through the Facebook page and posted the answers to certain questions like about study plans, about whatever for the students to see on the [school] platform, I think that would be beneficial for a lot of students (P5)

Scaffolding knowledge

Even having like, just platforms, like I said we have our Facebook group where we’re able to post both social and academic things which I think is so good because so many times people will be like, shoot, like this question I have about this project we’re doing, like does anyone else understand this? Or do we need to email the prof about it, kind of thing. Um, so I definitely think there are some huge benefits to it (P1)