Microlearning Through Tiktok in Higher Education. An Evaluation of Uses and Potentials

Education and Information Technologies (2024) 29:2365–2385
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-11904-4
Microlearning through TikTok in Higher Education.

An evaluation of uses and potentials
David Conde‑Caballero1 · Carlos A. Castillo‑Sarmiento2,3 ·

Inmaculada Ballesteros‑Yánez3,4 · Borja Rivero‑Jiménez5 ·
Lorenzo Mariano‑Juárez1
Received: 26 October 2022 / Accepted: 16 May 2023 / Published online: 2 June 2023
© The Author(s) 2023
Abstract
While social media is evolving rapidly, understanding its underlying and persistent
features with the potential to support high-quality learning would provide
opportunities to enhance competence acquisition and collaborative work in higher
education. Moreover, the adoption of tools that students already use in their everyday
lives facilitates the integration of new forms of learning. In this context, we have
developed an initiative to disseminate content through TikTok in three modules of
the Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing course, with the aim of promoting quality learning
through these microlearning environments. To this end, we have implemented these
learning environments and evaluated the users’ perceptions, as well as their level
of acceptance of the technology according to the Technology Acceptance Model.
Overall, our results show high levels of satisfaction with regard to engagement and
the content generated, as well as in terms of the acceptance of the technology. Our
results do not show gender-specific variations, but we did detect slight variations
depending on the subject in which the microlearning tool was deployed. Although
for the most part these variations do not change the participants’ assessment of their
experience, it will be necessary in the future to determine the underlying reasons
for these variations. In addition, our results suggest that it is possible to design a
content creation system to promote quality learning through microlearning that can
be transferred to other subjects, at least in the Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing.
Keyword Digital learning technologies · e-learning · microlearning · social media ·

technology acceptance · TikTok
Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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1 Introduction
In the last decade, the spread of social media and its use in pedagogical strategies has
changed the paradigm of the teaching–learning process through the incorporation
of internet-based resources. Indeed, more recently, the need for distance learning
during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic placed extra emphasis on
this shift (Medina et al., 2019; Petronzi & Petronzi, 2020; Rose, 2020). As part
of this “digital revolution” (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2016) a large number of teachers
are striving to develop forms of active learning that promote critical thinking and
a high degree of autonomous learning, particularly in the health sciences where
most of the quality research has been focused, including through the introduction
of more established technological tools such as blogs (Conde-Caballero et al.,
2019) and wikis (Zitzelsberger et al., 2015) in higher education. Nevertheless, there
are certain considerations which are specific to the integration of social media in
higher education courses and the objectives of doing so. Several studies have
delivered structured teaching through social media platforms (Guckian & Spencer,
2019; Hsieh et al., 2019; Webb et al., 2015), while others have focused more on
promoting public engagement with the material covered by a course (López-Goñi
& Sánchez-Angulo, 2018). Although there are undeniable barriers and limitations,
various social media applications have emerged, supported by advanced web tools
and the proliferation of smart mobile devices. In this context, the use of social
media platforms such as Twitter (Chawinga, 2017; Roberts et al., 2016), Facebook
(Pander et al., 2014) and Instagram (Reyna, 2021) in higher education seemed
inevitable. Naturally, the development of new technological tools opens a range of
new, unexplored pedagogical possibilities. However, the study of the application of
these new tools in teaching has received less attention due to the availability of other
options which, although already established, differ in nature.
Some studies (Pickering & Bickerdike, 2017; Webb et al., 2015) have shown a
positive correlation between the degree of social media utilization and test score;
others, however, suggest that time spent on social media has no impact (Manca &
Ranieri, 2016). Although there is not yet any consensus on whether the use of social
media correlates with academic results, the argument for the integration of social
media into higher education practice is supported from multiple theoretical stand-
points, particularly in health sciences education (Guckian et al., 2021; Whyte &
Hennessy, 2017), including in the development of rapid, accessible virtual commu-
nities of practice (McLoughlin et al., 2018). It has, therefore, been suggested that the
adoption of familiar tools already used by students can improve engagement, partici-
pation and motivation (Latif et al., 2019). Furthermore, students report changes in
the student–educator relationship when social media is introduced to the classroom
(Fischer et al., 2018; Raiman et al., 2017). Finally, social media initiatives make
students feel more comfortable asking questions to their peers, compared to asking
questions in a clinical setting (Ravindran et al., 2014). From the perspective of the
educator, social media platforms have been employed to cover a wide range of peda-
gogical possibilities, including promoting small-group learning (Cole et al., 2017),
empathy and self-efficacy (Anksorus & Bradley, 2020), medical professionalism
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Education and Information Technologies (2024) 29:2365–2385 2367
(Hsieh et al., 2019), collaborative learning (Khan et al., 2021) and communication
and learning (de Peralta et al., 2019).
One of the pedagogical applications of social media that has received the least
attention is the promotion of microlearning, partly due to the lack of tools to properly
support it (Sozmen, 2022). In the context of education in the health professions,
microlearning (the acquisition of knowledge or skills in the form of small units) has
been demonstrated to have a positive effect on students’ knowledge and confidence
in performing procedures, knowledge retention, study habits, and engagement in
collaborative learning (De Gagne et al., 2019). Although technology offers various
media through which microlearning activities may be deployed, the use of short
videos has already been recognised to enhance student learning in online education
(Hsin & Cigas, 2013).
One potentially interesting tool is the video-sharing social media platform
TikTok, which has experienced swift growth in use since its launch in 2016, and has
enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022). One of the reasons for
its relatively quick success is its simple interface which allows users to easily create,
edit and share audio-visual content (up to 3 min long) (Garg & Pahuja, 2020). The
platform provides simple tools, along with image, audio and video databases, that
allow users to generate videos of great complexity and originality. Although it was
initially perceived by many as a platform that would be used almost exclusively
by the younger generation, nowadays its users represent a broad cross-section
of society, producing a wide variety of content (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022). Some
experiences have been reported of the use of TikTok in teaching for pedagogical
purposes (Radin & Light, 2022; Thornton, 2022), such as in dance (Cervi, 2021;
Escamilla-Fajardo et al., 2021) and medical education (Comp et al., 2020). TikTok
videos offer one means to help bridge the divide between professor and students and
to provide students with a fun and relaxed way to keep up to date with all course
related materials (Rand & Brushett, 2021). The platform is also a useful health
promotion tool, as illustrated by its use in messaging to encourage the use of face
masks during the Covid-19 pandemic (Basch et al., 2021).
In order to realise the full potential of these tools to promote learning through
microlearning, we must be aware of the barriers and limitations in the pedagogical
context in which this pedagogical innovation is to be implemented, while at the same
time understanding the benefits that these tools can offer. On this basis, the present
work aims to contribute to this objective by adding to the existing knowledge in the
field of health-science teaching.
2 Objectives
This project aims to critically analyse the wide range of pedagogical possibilities
and limitations of the use of TikTok (one of the social networks with the greatest
penetration in the university community), to promote TikTok-based microlearning
environments, and thus to expand the body of evidence about the potential of
TikTok in health sciences education.
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Therefore, our main objective is to share our pedagogical experience, based on

the design of a TikTok-based microcontent dissemination programme in several
modules of the degree in nursing. It is hoped these experiences can be transferred to
other teaching environments related to the health sciences.
A secondary objective of this work is to evaluate qualitatively and quantitatively
the participants’ degree of satisfaction with several aspects of the teaching design
used, as well as their acceptance of the technology. More specifically, our assessment
of qualitative aspects covers more abstract constructs such as student engagement,
the creation of learning communities and the promotion of creativity.
3 Methodology
3.1 Study design
The investigation was designed as a longitudinal quasi-experimental study and was

conducted between February 7th and May 13th, 2022. The teacher responsible for
the subject created a private TikTok account especially for the subject (i.e., they did
not use their personal profile); Fig. 1 shows screenshots of one of these accounts as
an example. Content was uploaded to this account throughout the study at a rate of at
least 4 videos per week. The content uploaded to the TikTok account predominantly
fell into one of two categories, which was indicated by a corresponding hashtag (#)
in the description of the video:
– Content directly related to the course curriculum (#content), providing additional

examples, historical curiosities, examples of assessments and reviews of topics.
Fig. 1 Screenshots of the Psychosocial Sciences Applied to Nursing subject TikTok account
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– Complementary content related to cross-curricular issues that arose during the classes
(#complementary), book recommendations, commentary on current news, etc.
Each of these categories is aligned with one of the outcomes that the use of the
platform in this study was intended to support: 1) increasing participation and bridg-
ing the gap between teacher and student, 2) improving the acquisition of subject
content and competences, 3) developing the processes of evaluation and self-evalu-
ation through exercises presented in the videos, and 4) disseminating content which
was related to the subject but which went beyond the syllabus, with the intention
of encouraging interest and self-learning. The relationship between these objectives
and the hashtags used are shown in Table 1 along with examples of videos created
for this study.
As the TikTok account was a private account, all content uploaded to the
platform had to be produced by the teacher responsible, as the tools for interacting
with other videos on the platform were disabled. However, no specific guidelines
were established for the presentation format. This left it up to the teacher to decide
on aspects such as which video editing tools to use, the length of the video, and
whether or not their face would appear, according to the content to be created.
In order to participate in the project, students were required to register on the
TikTok platform by creating a private account. Although registration on the platform
was not compulsory, the mark assigned to this project accounted for 10% of the final
mark for the module. To obtain the maximum score in this section, students were
asked to interact with the TikTok platform, mainly through the comments and likes
tools, and to match their username on the platform with their real name.
To evaluate the project, we designed a quantitative and qualitative analysis
framework based on indicators encompassing participating agents, both students and
teaching staff. The participating teachers recorded in a session diary any difficulties
they experienced in implementing course content through the platform, additional
uses that had not yet been considered, and any inconveniences encountered. This
feedback was shared in sessions held every 3 weeks. At the end of the study, the
students were asked to complete the self-administered voluntary questionnaire
described in the following section.
3.2 Sample, questionnaire and data collection
Nursing degree students taking the Psychosocial Sciences Applied to Nursing

(PSAN, n = 79) and students of Ageing Nursing (AN, n = 86) modules at the
University of Extremadura and Nutrition and Dietetics (ND, n = 48) module at the
University of Castilla-La Mancha participated in this study. These modules were
chosen due in part to the interest of the teachers in exploring the application of the
social media platform, but also due to the fact that there was no overlap of students
between these subjects, i.e., each participant in the study was only exposed to one
learning environment.
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Table 1 Relationship between intended outcomes and the hashtag used
Intended outcome Example Hashtag used in example
1) Increase participation Video showing various food products and challenging students to guess what proportion of certain #complementary
ingredients they contain
2) Improve acquisition of competences Video presenting the key points of the mandatory information that must appear on the labelling of food #content
products
3) Evaluation Video in which the teacher poses a multiple-choice question with possible answers, then explains #content
which answer is correct and why
4) Scientific dissemination Video explaining the "French paradox" and why it does not fit with today’s mainstream nutritional #complementary
theory, even though it is still used to justify recommending drinking wine with meals
Education and Information Technologies (2024) 29:2365–2385
Students completed a self-reported questionnaire, which was made avail-

able through a secure virtual platform (Microsoft Forms, Office 365) for one week
(16th–22nd May 2022). Participation in the study was voluntary and students received
information about the goals of the study and data protection regulations. To answer the
questionnaire, it was necessary for the student to consent to participate in the study.
Finally, a questionnaire was developed to assess the students’ perception of their
experience. This consisted of a first section designed to collect socio-demographic
data about the users and a second section designed to capture their assessment
of their experiences of using the social media platform as part of their learning.
The latter section, in turn, contained qualitative and quantitative questions. The
qualitative part of the questionnaire was inspired by the work of Constantinides and
colleagues (Constantinides et al., 2013), while the qualitative part was developed
following the work of Sprenger and Schwaninger, who had previously adapted the
Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) form to digital learning tools (Sprenger &
Schwaninger, 2021).
The TAM questionnaires (originally described by Davis (Davis, 1989)) are
divided into three parts: one dedicated to measuring perceived usefulness (PU),
another to measuring perceived ease of use (PEOU) (after using the tools), and a
third part with which the model can predict the behavioural intention (BI) to use the
tool in the future. In our questionnaire, the first 5 questions focused on measuring
PU, questions 6 to 10 on measuring PEOU, and questions 11 to 15 on measuring BI.
The questionnaire used is included as Appendix A. The first part used a 5-point
Likert scale, ranging from 1 (complete disagreement) to 5 (complete agreement),
while the TAM questionnaire used the 7-point Likert scale more commonly
employed in this type of assessment, with the scale ranging from 1 (complete
disagreement) to 7 (complete agreement).
A pilot test was conducted with 10 volunteer students from another subject
(Biochemistry, first year) who did not participate in this experience in order to check
the consistency of the data obtained and the doubts that students had when filling in
the questionnaire.
Finally, the adaptation of the survey from English to Spanish was carried out by
our English proofreading service (bilingual Spanish/English), revised by the authors
in Spanish and translated back into English and corrected for this publication.
3.3 Ethics statement
In accordance with Declaration of Helsinki guidelines, subjects were informed

of the objectives of the study, as well as its anonymous, voluntary, and non-profit
nature. Only the researchers involved in the study had access to the collected data.
3.4 Statistical analysis of data
The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to assess the normality of quantitative vari-
ables. Where the data did not fit to normality, the nonparametric Mann–Whitney U
test was applied to compare between sexes, and the Kruskal–Wallis test to compare
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between course modules. For qualitative variables, Pearson’s χ2 test was used. In all
analyses, P values < 0.05 were taken to be statistically significant. Where necessary,
post-hoc DMS tests were used to understand differences between groups. Statistical
analyses of the data were carried out using version 28.0 of the SPSS statistical pack-
age. Qualitative variables have been expressed as percentages, while quantitative
variables are presented as the mean ± standard error of the mean (SEM).
4 Findings
4.1 Characteristics of the sample
The general characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 2. A total of 213
students responded voluntarily to the questionnaire. All of them agreed to participate
in the study. Of the 213 participants, 166 were female (78%) and 47 were male (22%);
123 of them were first-year students (58%), with 81 in their second year (38%), and
the remaining 9 further in their studies (4%). The mean age was 20.8 years (0.4 SEM).
Results are expressed as percentages or as mean ± SEM when indicated. PSAN:
Psychosocial Sciences Applied to Nursing; AN: Ageing Nursing; ND: Nutrition and Dietetics.
4.2 Evaluation of the microlearning environment
When users were asked about their perception of the environment created in TikTok
as a tool capable of encouraging participation or increasing curiosity about the syl-
labus content, the results were very positive: for responses given on a scale between
1 and 5, where 1 represents strong disagreement and 5 strong agreement, the average
for the first question was 3.84 ± 0.07 and the average for the second question was
4.02 ± 0.07. The distribution of responses is shown in Fig. 2.
Table 2 Descriptive analysis Total (N = 213) %

of the sample of undergraduate
nursing students Sex
Male 47 22.1
Female 166 77.9
Age (years)
20.8 ± 0.4
University level
1st year 123 57.7
2nd year 81 38
3rd year 8 3.8
4th year 1 0.5
Topic
PSAN 79 37.1
AN 86 40.4
ND 48 22.5
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Fig. 2 Perceived influence on class participation and willingness to learn more
Fig. 3 Evaluation of the types

of content available on the
platform
The students’ rating of the two types of content provided through the learning
environment was also positive, with an average rating of 4.37 ± 0.05 for content
videos (#content) and 4.18 ± 0.06 for complementary content videos (#complemen-
tary). The distribution of responses is shown in Fig. 3. These results, together with
those presented in Fig. 2, suggest a high degree of participant satisfaction with the
experience.
4.3 Assessment of the acceptance of TikTok as a learning tool
Acceptance of the use of the TikTok learning environment was assessed by means
of a Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) questionnaire, a tool which has previ-
ously been used in the literature to measure the degree of acceptance of technologies
in the teaching environment. The results obtained are shown in Fig. 4. In general
terms, the acceptance of the technology was positive, since none of the 15 items had
an average response of less than 5 (with 4 being a neutral score).
Based on these results, we proceeded to evaluate user acceptance of the technol-
ogy by calculating the PU, PEOU and BI, as described in the Methodology section.
The results are shown in Fig. 5. The mean score obtained for PU was 5.38 ± 0.08, for
PEOU it was 6.07 ± 0.08 and for BI it was 5.09 ± 0.10.
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Fig. 4 Participants’ responses to the Technology Acceptance Model questionnaire
4.4 Influence of the sex of participants on the evaluation of the study
We also studied the influence of the students’ sex on their evaluation of the
experience. To this end, a statistical analysis of the quantitative and qualitative
variables was performed, as described in the Methodology section (results are
included in the supplementary file, Tables S1 to S4).
However, it should be noted that there were significant differences (p = 0.022) in
the average age of the participants according to sex, with females being younger
Fig. 5 Constructs of the

Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM)
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than males, and that statistically significant (p = 0.044) differences were found in the
distribution of sexes between the PSAN and ND subjects, the latter having a much
higher female-to-male ratio.
Despite the differences in gender distribution in our sample, most of the variables
studied showed no significant difference in the evaluation of the experience by the
two sexes.
Accordingly, when we proceeded to evaluate users’ acceptance of this technology
by calculating PU, PEOU and BI scores taking participant gender into account, no
significant differences were observed, as presented in Fig. 6. These results suggest
that the sex of the participants has little influence on their assessment of this peda-
gogical experience.
4.5 Influence of the module in which the participants were enrolled

on the evaluation of the experience
Finally, the extent to which the subject in which each microlearning environment
was implemented influenced the students’ assessment was analysed. For this pur-
pose, a statistical analysis of the qualitative and qualitative variables obtained
was performed, as described in the Methodology section (results are included in
the supplementary file, Tables S5 to S8). In contrast to the influence of partici-
pant gender, the module in which the environment was implemented appears to
have a more marked influence on the students’ assessment of the teaching expe-
rience. In fact, significant differences were found in virtually all aspects of the
microenvironment assessment when the module being taken by the participants
was included in the analysis.
In terms of the participants’ perception of the influence of the use of TikTok
on increasing their participation in class, students reported greater increases in
participation in the PSAN and ND modules, while students’ reported increase in
Fig. 6 Gender distribution
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participation in the AN module was lower. A similar situation was observed when
analysing the data on the participants’ perception of the increase in their curiosity,
where again students taking the PSAN and ND modules reported higher increases
than for AN. Finally, this trend is also reflected in the results of the analysis based
on the nature of the videos uploaded to the platform. It is, however, important to
highlight that the assessments were positive in all cases (the overall average of the
assessments was higher than 3, which is the neutral score on the 5-point Likert
scale employed, while the averages for the PSAN and ND modules were above 4
in all cases).
As for the previous analyses, the TAM responses were used to calculate the
PU, PEOU and BI scores, differentiating between the teaching module in which
the microlearning environment was implemented. The analysis of the data shows
differences in both PU and BI, with the PSAN module obtaining the highest
scores in both cases, while no differences were observed for the PEOU con-
struct. Similarly to the results reported above, the participants’ assessments bro-
ken down by the module they were taking continue to be positive (on a 7-point
Likert scale, the mean is above 4, which is the neutral score, and above 5 in all
cases for the PSAN and ND modules). These results are shown in Fig. 7.
However, the observed differences in the evaluations of the microlearning
environments are not significant enough to alter the clearly positive assessment of
the experience by the students, even in the most unfavourable case. This suggests
that the differences intrinsic to the design of the experiment (for example, the
teacher responsible for each participating module or the topics covered) are not
sufficient to cause participants to reject the model.
Fig. 7 Subject distribution
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5 Discusion
This paper evaluates the possibilities and limitations of introducing TikTok-

based microlearning to university-level health sciences teaching. Our results
presented above for a sample of students enrolled in three different modules of
the bachelor’s degree in Nursing (N = 213) demonstrate a broad acceptance of
the experience. However, when the acceptance of the environment was analysed
according to the TAM model, differences were observed in the participants’
assessment depending on the environment (the academic module) in which they
were exposed to the learning environment. The participants’ assessments were
independent of other factors (such as gender). These subtle differences may be
due to various factors: the year of study in which the teaching is offered (first
or second year), contrasts with the pedagogical model of the other subjects
being taught in the same semester, the predisposition of each group of students
towards teaching innovation, and even the influence of the individual teachers
(for example, if a certain teacher provided more detail when developing the
microlearning content). Furthermore, although the activity was designed to use
a similar structure across each environment, the content and activities specific
to each subject may have influenced the way in which the participants perceived
the experience.
Given that the application we worked with is ready to use (as well as being widely
adopted), we expected to—and indeed did—find high values for the PEOU scores.
High scores for PU and BI were also to be expected since the microcontent offered
through the platform provides help to pass the course and was therefore aligned with
the students’ objectives (Biggs, 2003). One obvious factor that may have influenced
these positive ratings is the fact that we chose to develop our learning environments
using an application that is so popular with students.
Our study has, however, yielded a surprising result in that, despite the consensus
in the literature which assumes that anything that does not provide exam-relevant
input will not be aligned with the students’ interests, and will therefore be less
valued (FitzPatrick et al., 2015), our participants positively valued the fact that
the experience has helped them to increase their curiosity towards the subject
content. This is reflected in the fact that the participants evaluated the videos
on complementary content just as positively (with no statistically significant
differences) as the videos with exam-related content.
In our opinion, one of the strong points of using TikTok to develop learning envi-
ronments is the simplicity that it provides when creating content, as one is not lim-
ited to relying on available content created by other users (one of the classic limita-
tions of virtual learning environments). Instead, the teacher can easily create their
own content following a homogeneous format with respect to the rest of the content
they upload to the platform, which in turn makes it easier for the end users to accept
and use the technology.
The original design of the project emphasised a teacher-only approach to
content creation, although some examples of student content creation arose
spontaneously during the course of the project, hinting at directions for future
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developments in peer-to-peer and peer-to-teacher communication. This aligns with

the findings of Radin (Radin & Light, 2022), outlining best practices for effective
and engaging science communication teaching and learning. Most works using
social networks such as Facebook (Legaree, 2014) and Tik Tok itself (Yélamos-
Guerra et al., 2022) have reported improvements in student motivation and student
engagement with the learning process (Cooke, 2017); this is also reflected in the
results of our study, surpassing the results for other types of tools, such as blogs
(Conde-Caballero et al., 2019).
Previous studies incorporating qualitative perspectives (Gallardo Echenique
et al., 2015; Smith, 2017) have noted that social networks became important to
the extent that they served as a means of communication and a way of staying
"up to date". TikTok can be employed as a means of communication with the
student group, although it does not seem to improve on more conventional
channels such as email or Moodle. It has also been reported that students use
social media in their own learning, and so developing students’ knowledge and
skills in terms of wider digital literacy could foster their ability to integrate
the beneficial aspects of social media that support their learning, while
also mitigating the pitfalls that can hinder learning (Smith, 2016). It is also
interesting to note that students’ use of the tool tends to centre more on content
consumption than creation.
Some limitations associated with the use of TikTok to promote microlearning
cannot be ignored: some authors have pointed out that the lower reliability of
student-produced materials not subject to peer review could lead to confusing
knowledge processes (Ovaere et al., 2018). In our work, the greater focus on
teacher-created content means that fewer errors can be assumed. On the other
hand, with teacher supervision, it may even be possible to take advantage of
this phenomenon to deepen the critical processes of generating and constructing
evidence. Other works warn of the danger of focusing education on tools or media,
which may in fact increase the separation between teacher and student by altering
the final objective of such a relationship (Yancey, 2017). We believe that our work
is a productive use of microlearning tools that complement traditional teaching,
but are not to be taken as a substitute for it.
5.1 Limitations of the study
As with any study in educational sciences, the present study has certain
limitations, which means that the outcomes of this work should be interpreted
with caution and contextualised in the respective teaching situation. Firstly,
the sample size is relatively small. Therefore, it would be desirable to extend
this study both to obtain a larger sample size, and to observe whether there are
differences between other subjects in the field of health and care. Furthermore,
this study did not include a control group. It is widely recognised that the
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inclusion of control groups in teaching experiences is not always easy and

sometimes raises ethical dilemmas. However, just as it would be desirable to
extend these experiences, it would also be useful to compare results against a
control group. In addition, the criteria used to define the two main categories
to which the produced content was uploaded were chosen ad hoc, so it would
be interesting to contrast other proposals that use different terminologies to
categorise the content. Finally, there are differences intrinsic to each teacher,
group of students and subject matter that may influence how these microlearning
environments are developed and implemented, and thus how they are evaluated
by the students.
5.2 Future perspectives
As explored in the previous paragraph, further studies are needed to explore the
full potential of these TikTok-generated microlearning environments in the field of
health sciences. These studies should not only focus on the teaching possibilities
offered by the platform (i.e., the possibility of generating content and sharing
it in a learning environment), but also on understanding the factors that favour
students’ acceptance one type of technology over another. After all, it is tempting
to assume that the technology that is more easily accepted should be the one that
promotes more learning among our students. For this reason, it would be very
interesting to obtain sufficient evidence (e.g., by measuring students’ academic
performance) to demonstrate which types of tools or teaching interventions would
be the most appropriate when it comes to promoting high-quality learning through
microlearning environments in a university population.
6 Conclusions
The outcomes of this study reinforce our hypothesis that justifies the application
of social networks as a complementary tool in university teaching, especially
in health sciences. The students’ assessment of the teaching experience is
clearly positive in the areas analysed: engagement with the different subjects,
motivation for the mandatory and complementary content and competences, as
well as the high level of acceptance of the technology in the different constructs
of the TAM. On the other hand, no significant differences were observed in
terms of the evaluations of the experience according to gender, but significant
differences were observed according to the subject in which the microlearning
environment was deployed. Overall, our work shows very positive evaluations by
students when the TikTok platform was used to promote high-quality learning
through microlearning.
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Appendix A
Part A: Socio-demographic characteristics.
1. Sex
a. Man
b. Woman
c. Other
2. Age (years)
3. Current year of university studies
a. First
b. Second
c. …
4. From where do you mainly access the platform?
a. Home network
b. University network
c. Mobile network
d. Other
Part B: Rating of the perceived use of the TikTok tool.
1. Please rate the following statements between 1 and 5, where 1 represents

strong disagreement and 5 represents strong agreement.
The use of TikTok as a teaching tool promotes greater participation in the
classroom
The use of TikTok as a teaching tool increases my curiosity about the content
of the module
2. How would you rate the review content videos? (from 1 to 5 stars)
3. How would you rate the complementary content videos? (from 1 to 5 stars)
Part C: Assessment of the acceptance of TikTok as a learning tool.

Please read the following statements carefully and indicate how much you agree
with them on a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 represents strong disagreement, 7 repre-
sents strong agreement, and 4 indicates that you neither agree nor disagree:
1. Using TikTok helps me learn

2. I find TikTok useful
3. TikTok helps me learn and understand course content
4. Using TikTok helps me learn the course content faster
13
5. I find TikTok useful for my studies

6. I find it easy to learn how to use TikTok
7. TikTok is easy to use
8. Interacting with TikTok doesn’t require a lot of mental effort
9. Overall, I think it is easy to use TikTok
10. Interacting with TikTok is clear and understandable
11. When it is available, I plan to use TikTok frequently for my studies
12. When it is available, I plan to use TikTok frequently during the semester
13. When it is available, I intend to use TikTok frequently
14. If I had access to TikTok now, I would use it
15. If I had access to TikTok now, I assume I would use it
Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.
org/10.1007/s10639-023-11904-4.
Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all university students that kindly participated in
this project to help improve it and Dr. José Ramón Muñoz-Rodríguez for his kind advice during data
analysis.
Authors’ contributions DC-C and LM-J conceived and drafted this manuscript. CAC-S, DC-C, BR-J and
LM-J developed the work on TikTok platform. IB-Y, BR-J and CAC-S analysed the results and extracted
the main conclusions. All authors contributed to the final manuscript. All authors read and approved the
final manuscript.
Funding Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature.
Data availability To ensure students’ privacy, the datasets analysed in the present study are not publicly
available. They are, however, are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Declarations
Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as
you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com-
mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article
are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the
material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is
not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission
directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licen
ses/by/4.0/.
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Authors and Affiliations
David Conde‑Caballero1 · Carlos A. Castillo‑Sarmiento2,3 ·

Inmaculada Ballesteros‑Yánez3,4 · Borja Rivero‑Jiménez5 ·
Lorenzo Mariano‑Juárez1
* Carlos A. Castillo‑Sarmiento
CarlosA.Castillo@uclm.es
David Conde‑Caballero
dcondecab@unex.es
Inmaculada Ballesteros‑Yánez
Inmaculada.BYanez@uclm.es
Borja Rivero‑Jiménez
brivero@unex.es
Lorenzo Mariano‑Juárez
lorenmariano@unex.es
1
Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing and Occupational Therapy, University
of Extremadura, 10003 Cáceres, Spain
2
Department of Nursing, Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy, School of Physiotherapy
and Nursing, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 45071 Toledo, Spain
3
Regional Center for Biomedical Research, University of Castilla-La Mancha, 02008 Albacete,
Spain
4
Department of Inorganic and Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, School of Medicine,
University of Castilla-La Mancha, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
5
Department of Business Management and Sociology, Teacher Training College, University
of Extremadura, 10.003 Cáceres, Spain
13

Microlearning Through Tiktok in Higher Education. An Evaluation of Uses and Potentials

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Education and Information Technologies (2024) 29:2365–2385

Microlearning through TikTok in Higher Education.

David Conde‑Caballero1 · Carlos A. Castillo‑Sarmiento2,3 ·

Keyword Digital learning technologies · e-learning · microlearning · social media ·

Extended author information available on the last page of the article

Therefore, our main objective is to share our pedagogical experience, based on

The investigation was designed as a longitudinal quasi-experimental study and was

– Content directly related to the course curriculum (#content), providing additional

3.2 Sample, questionnaire and data collection

Nursing degree students taking the Psychosocial Sciences Applied to Nursing

Students completed a self-reported questionnaire, which was made avail-

In accordance with Declaration of Helsinki guidelines, subjects were informed

3.4 Statistical analysis of data

4.1 Characteristics of the sample

4.2 Evaluation of the microlearning environment

Table 2 Descriptive analysis Total (N = 213) %

Fig. 2 Perceived influence on class participation and willingness to learn more

Fig. 3 Evaluation of the types

4.3 Assessment of the acceptance of TikTok as a learning tool

Fig. 4 Participants’ responses to the Technology Acceptance Model questionnaire

4.4 Influence of the sex of participants on the evaluation of the study

Fig. 5 Constructs of the

4.5 Influence of the module in which the participants were enrolled

Fig. 6 Gender distribution

Fig. 7 Subject distribution

This paper evaluates the possibilities and limitations of introducing TikTok-

developments in peer-to-peer and peer-to-teacher communication. This aligns with

5.1 Limitations of the study

inclusion of control groups in teaching experiences is not always easy and

Part A: Socio-demographic characteristics.

4. From where do you mainly access the platform?

Part B: Rating of the perceived use of the TikTok tool.

1. Please rate the following statements between 1 and 5, where 1 represents

Part C: Assessment of the acceptance of TikTok as a learning tool.

1. Using TikTok helps me learn

5. I find TikTok useful for my studies

Reyna, J. (2021). #InstaLearn: A Framework to Embed Instagram in Higher Education. En T. J. Basti-

Authors and Affiliations

David Conde‑Caballero1 · Carlos A. Castillo‑Sarmiento2,3 ·

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3.2 Sample, questionnaire and data collection

3.4 Statistical analysis of data

4.1 Characteristics of the sample

4.2 Evaluation of the microlearning environment

4.3 Assessment of the acceptance of TikTok as a learning tool

4.4 Influence of the sex of participants on the evaluation of the study

4.5 Influence of the module in which the participants were enrolled

5.1 Limitations of the study