Using Social Media to Enhance Student Engagement and Learning Effectiveness in Microbiology Education: The “Adopt A Microbe” Program

The Adopt a Microbe project integrates traditional classroom instruction with Instagram to enhance microbiology and immunology education learning. Designed as a blended learning strategy, the project aimed to foster engagement, satisfaction, and creativity among first-year Bachelor of Pharmacy (B. Pharm) students at a Malaysian public university during the 2022/2023 academic session. Students were assigned a microorganism (such as a virus, bacterium, fungus, or protozoan parasite) and required to research its characteristics before communicating their findings through Instagram posts using visuals, avatars, and lay-friendly content. This study evaluated the project’s effectiveness in enhancing student engagement, satisfaction, learning experience, and self-evaluated effectiveness, while identifying implementation challenges. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining an online questionnaire completed by 65 students with a focus group discussion involving five participants. Students reported high levels of engagement (mean = 4.46), satisfaction (mean = 4.39), learning experience (mean = 4.34), and self-evaluated effectiveness (mean = 4.40). Qualitative findings indicated that students valued the project’s creativity, science communication opportunities, and practical learning experience, while identifying challenges in simplifying scientific concepts, managing social media use, and developing technical design skills. These findings support the use of social media as an effective blended learning approach for microbiology education and pharmacy training.