Should we be using social media in medical education?

The #UKmeded chat tonight, 31 January 2013, will look at whether we should be using social media in medical education.

On the #UKmeded GDoc asking for suggestions for chat topics Anne Marie Cunningham has written:

I see lots of talk about this on Twitter, but I’m not sure how other students feel about this. Would it feel like a deluge? My past experiments to get students to engage in social media have not had a very big take-up so I think that often we need to get staff on board first. And we have to talk to people realistically about time management because for many the biggest worry is getting swamped with information.

Undergraduate students in most medical schools form their own Facebook groups but they see this very much as their own social space, even though they might share information about clinical attachments and share revision tips and resources etc around exam time.  Surveys I’ve read and conversations with students at my own school would seem to indicate that there’s generally a 50-50 split between students who don’t want medical schools interacting with them on Facebook and those that think we should because they dont like the VLE.

So are there other social media channels we should be using to support medical education at undergraduate and postgraduate level?  There are those, who are perhaps still relatively early adopters, using the likes of Twitter to support medical education but we are still in the minority.  Some staff are wary of using social media channels because of concerns about digital professionalism.  Also the assumption that all students are already making good use of technology and social media to support their learning is misplaced.  Yet those in engaging with social media and the whole free open access medical education #FOAMed movement recognise the potential for social media to support life long learning.

With all this in mind here are a few things to think about and stimulate discussion for tonight’s chat:

• Should we be using social media to support medical education?
• Do we need to be embedding the use of social media in the curriculum so that students are introduced to the benefits of social media and can see how these tools can be used to support learning as well as raise awareness of individuals’ digital footprints and professionalism?
• Does using social media just add to the expectation that students expect instant responses to questions etc and make it more difficult for staff to switch off from work and add further blur to the work – personal divide?
• How would medical students and trainees like to see social media used to support their learning?

Join the discussion at 9.

Meded networking at #asme11

  by  woodleywonderworks 

A big thank you to everyone who came along to our workshop on networks and social media in medical education at ASME last Friday.  It was great to meet some of the regulars on our weekly #meded chats face to face at the workshop along with all the other participants who came along. It was great to people from the UK, the US, Gaza and Singapore!

We’ve captured the tweets from the workshop so that you can browse and reflect on some of topics that were discussed during the session, it makes quite interesting reading.  There were 43 contributors to the twitter conversation including many who weren’t at the workshop but who shared why they find twitter useful with the workshop audience.  You can also take a look at the tweets on the official conference hashtag #asmeasm11, not all the tweets are there but you’ll get a good flavour of the conversation being shared.

During the session we mentioned a number of sites, web events and tools and if you didn’t catch them all we’ve got links to them here.

Google map – As we mentioned at the workshop we’re keen to use to social media to network with others involved in medical education.  It would be great if you’d like to add yourself to Anne Marie’s google map of medical education around the world.

#MedEd chat – We also have weekly meded chats on Twitter at 21.00hrs (UK time) on Thursdays and you’re more than welcome to take part or lurk in the wings.  You can catch up with previous chats here and be in touch with me or Anne Marie if you’d like to suggest topics for future chats.

#TwitJC –  There are also the weekly Twitter journal club chats that run on Sunday evenings at 20.00hrs. You can find out more about these on the twitjc blog and read the transcripts of previous sessions.  Follow them on Twitter to find out which papers are being discussed.

Scoop.it – We used Scoop.it a content curation tool to present some of the topics we covered in the workshop.  Take a look at Anne Marie’s scoop.it on social media and networks in medical education to recap on some of the sites we looked at.  I’ve got a small number of Scoop.it invites so tweet me if you’d like one or leave a comment on this post.

Sceenr – A free web tool that allows you to record a sceencast of up to 5 minutes.  It’s a great tool for creating quick learning resources.

TILT – Today I Learnt that has been developed by Trip database as a place to record and share clinical learning.

We’re keen to continue the discussion going beyond the #asme11 workshop and it would be great to continue connecting via this blog, twitter and our #meded chats.  We’d be pleased to have you do a guest post here on Meded Connect so leave a comment or be in touch with us if you’d like to post something here.  You can also post any follow-up questions you might have about the workshop too.

We’ll also be looking at the various comments each of the groups recorded on the post-its at the workshop and hopefully we can follow up on those here too to continue the conversation.  We hope you keep in touch and that we can build an online network of  medical educators. To finish off here’s the video we ended the workshop off with.