Can YouTube enhance student nurse learning? Andrew Clifton ⁎, Claire Mann Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK abstract article info Article history: Accepted 1 October 2010 Keywords: Deep learning YouTube Digital nativity Nurse education The delivery of nurse education has changed radically in the past two decades. Increasingly, nurse educators are using new technology in the classroom to enhance their teaching and learning. One recent technological development to emerge is the user-generated content website YouTube. Originally YouTube was used as a repository for sharing home-made videos, more recently online content is being generated by political parties, businesses and educationalists. We recently delivered a module to undergraduate student nurses in which the teaching and learning were highly populated with YouTube resources. We found that the use of YouTube videos increased student engagement, critical awareness and facilitated deep learning. Furthermore, these videos could be accessed at any time of the day and from a place to suit the student. We acknowledge that there are some constraints to using YouTube for teaching and learning particularly around the issue of unregulated content which is often misleading, inaccurate or biased. However, we strongly urge nurse educators to consider using YouTube for teaching and learning, in and outside the classroom, to a generation of students who are native of a rapidly changing digital world. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction There is no doubt that we are living in times of fast paced technological change which is altering the nature of social practice. The traditional model of higher education (HE) is shifting with students becoming powerful consumers of education and demanding up-to-date interesting and interactive models of teaching and support. Yet, it could be argued that university teaching remains driven by historical pedagogic models with the traditional passive lecture at the forefront of teaching delivery. 21st century nurse educators have an array of technological tools at their disposal to engage and stimulate student nurse learning. Virtual reality, patient simulation, podcasts, blogs, wikis, iTunes U (allows HE institutions to make audio and visual content available for download), computer assisted learning and user-generated content are some of the more popular innovations used to stimulate and engage the contemporary student. There is an emerging literature discussing how student nurses are being exposed to some of these technological develop- ments in the classroom (McConville and Lane, 2006; Kelly et al., 2009; Baxter et al., 2009; Gerdprasert et al., 2010). What is less clear is the extent to which these technologies produce better outcomes for student nurses. Hall (2010) acknowledges that there are benefits to technological approaches in teaching and learning, but rejects the idea that technology is a “panacea” for the netgen (net generation). Skiba (2007, p.100), however, strongly argues that these emerging technologies “will transform the way nursing education is offered” in the future. YouTube One recent development in the past five years and has been described as a “social phenomenon” is the user-generated content social networking site YouTube. Launched in June 2005 YouTube is a repository for user-generated content including personal video clips, TV clips and music videos uploaded to the internet by individual members of the public. In more recent year's television broadcasters, political parties, universities, businesses, charities, hospitals, and non- governmental organizations have established YouTube channels to deliver their own unique message or ideas to a wider audience. This phenomenon is linked to the incredible rate of digital growth which is reflected in several ways in changes in the social world. The latest generation of students is native of a digital world surrounded by ubiquitous access to a worldwide online environment through a range of devices. Today's students are experienced in digital interaction from an increasingly early age. They have different habits to students who have gone before in so far as they demand the wide range of resources to which they are accustomed in their social lives but suffer a lower attention span due to the range of activities constantly offered to them. Therefore as nurse educators we must find new ways of meeting the needs of the netgen. One solution to this problem is to use YouTube for teaching and learning. Nurse Education Today 31 (2011) 311–313 ⁎ Corresponding author. University of Nottingham, Room B19, Sir Colin Campbell Building, Innovation Park, Triumph Road, Nottingham, NG7 2TU, UK. Tel.: + 44 115 82 32473; fax: +44 115 82 31392. E-mail address: andrew.clifton@nottingham.ac.uk (A. Clifton). 0260-6917/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2010.10.004 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Nurse Education Today journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/nedt