Today was the final day of AMEE 2011. Here are the notes I took.
The influence of social networks on students’ learning
J Hommes
Collaborative learning is supposed to facilitate interaction and it’s impact on student learning
Difficult to quantify the role of informal learning
Informal social interaction: behaviour is the result of interactions and relationships between people
Many variables can impact on student learning (e.g. motivation)
How does the effect of SN on students’ learning relate to possible confounders?
Methods:
- Academic motivation scale (determine motivation)
- College adaption questionnaire (determine social interactions)
- GPA (previous performance impacts on future performance)
- Factual knowledge test
- Social network analysis (looked at Friendship, Giving information, Getting information)
Social interaction in informal contexts has a substantial influence on learning
Could it also be true that good learners are also well-developed social beings? If learning is inherently social, then people who are more social might just be better learners, and it has nothing to do with the social network?
Veterinary students’ use of and attitude toward Facebook
Jason Coe
Physicians share information on Facebook that could potentially upset their patients
People disclsoe more personal information on Facebook than they do in general
32% of students’ profiles contained information that could reflect poorly on the student or profession → venting, breaches of confidentiality, overtly sexual images / behavioural issues, substance abuse
78% of students believe that their profile pictures accurately reflected who they were at that time, 56% of students believed that their current profile pics accurately represents them as a future professional
More professionals believed that posting comments and pictures about clients on Facebook was acceptable, than students
Should professional students’ be held to a higher standard than other students?
Should Facebook information be used in hiring decisions?
An awareness of consequences causes students’ to disclose less on Facebook than they do in general
Individuals have a right to autonomy → education and guidelines can minimise risks
The issue of disclosure is important when it comes to using online social networks
Developing a network of veterinary ICT in education to suppor informal lifelong learning
S Baillie and P an Beukelen
Goals were to generate evidence of benefits and limitations of informal, lifelong learning using ICT
Questions in focus group that would affect participation in an online group:
- What activities? Networking, finding information, asking questions, discussions
- What motivations? Anonymity, sharing knowledge, convenience, saving time, travel and cost issues, required component
- What support? Employer support, attitude, help desk, post moderator (reliable information)
- What barriers? Time to participate, lack of confidence, lack of technical knowledge, understanding
- What challenges? Poor site usability, professionalism issues / behavioural change
Was important to have behavioural guidelines for participation in the online network e.g. respect, etc.
Can YouTube help students in learning surface anatomy?
Samy Azer
Aim: to determine if YouTube videos can provide useful information on surface anatomy
For each video, the following was recorded:
- Title
- Authors
- Duration of video
- Number of viewers
- Posted comments
- Number of days on YouTube
- Name of creator
No simple system is available for assessing video quality, but looked at (yes = 1, no = 0):
- Content – scientifically corrent, images clear
- Technical
- Authority of author / creator (but how was this determined?)
- Title reflects video content?
- Clear audio quality
- Reasonable download time
- Educational objectives stated
- Up to date creator information
57 out of 235 videos were deemed to be relevant, but only 15 of those were determined to have educational usefulness. Several videos were created by students and were often of a high quality
Conclusion was that YouTube is currently an inadequate source of information for learning surface anatomy, and that medical schools should take responsibility for creating and sharing resources online
Social media and the medical profession
Dror Maor
What is public and private? How do we separate out our personal and professional identities? Should we separate them out?
Discussion of the role of, and use of, social media by medical professionals (http://ama.com.au/node/6231)
Why do people think that using social media takes anything away from what we already do? Social media doesn’t take anything away from the hallway conversations…it’s not “better” or “worse” than “the old” way of doing things.
From “knowledge transfer” to “knowledge interaction” – changing models of research use, influence and impact
Huw Davies
Research, evidence and practice → moving from “knowing differently” to “doing differently”
There’s a lot of noise, but are we having any impact on practice? Who are we talking to? What kinds of conversations are we having? How can our collective input have an impact?
Currently, the model entails doing research, publishing it and hoping that clinicians change behavioural based on the results. No questions about how the knowledge transfer takes place?
How does knowledge “move around” complex systems?
The current system is too:
- Simple
- rational
- Linear
Current outcomes are variable, inefficient, ineffective, unsafe, and sometimes, inhumane
Why is it that when we know more than ever before, do we perform so poorly within our healthcare systems?
- Goals are ambiguous
- Workforce is multiple
- Environment is complex
- Tasks are complex and ambiguous
Even though organisations are highly social, yet the belief is that caregivers act as they do because of personal knowledge, motives and skills
Major influences on outcomes are through the organisations and systems through which services are delivered, not individual characterstics (applies equally to educational outcomes)
Context matters → it’s situational, not dispositional (behaviour is as much about the context as it is about dispositions)
Reductive and mechanistic approaches only get us so far. “Rocket science” is merely complicated. Tackingly educational and health issues is genuinely complex because of connections of people, each with own unpredictable behaviours and contexts that changes over time in non-linear ways
Throwing information at people doesn’t generate appropriate responses / behaviours
For some, “evidence” is reduced to research on “what works”. Consequnces of this:
- It’s relative straight-forward if the right methods are used
- It provides instruction on what to do i.e. it allows us to make choices more easily
- Assumes that the answers are out there to be found
Knowledge required for effective services is more broad than “what works”?
- Knowing about the problems: their nature, inter-relationships, “lived experiences”
- Knowing why: explaining the relationship between values and policies, and how they have changed over time
- Knowing how: how to put change into practice, what is pragmatic
- Knowing who: who should be involved, how do we build alliances, connect clinical and non-clinical
Challenge of integrating “knowledge”:
- Uncertain process, engages with values, existing (tacit) knowledge, experience
- socially and contextually situated
- not necessarily convergent
- may require difficult “unlearning”
Also, not just what knowledge:
- Whose knowledge / evidence?
“evidence” may be used selectively and tactically, use is not necessarily disinterested (evidence is what the powerful say it is)
Knowledge and power are co-constructed
Knowledge is not “a thing”, is it a process of “knowing”?
Knowledge is what happens when you take data from research, and combine it with experience, and shared through dialogue
Uncovering evidence and understanding its complexity
Barry Issenberg
“If there’s evidence, I feel confident. If there’s no evidence, I’m uncomfortable”
Evidence is only useful if it meets the needs of the user. Who is the user?
Features of learning through simulation (BEME guide 4), a systematic review:
- Feedback
- Repetitive practice
- Curriculum integration
- Varying difficulty
- Adaptive learning
- Clinical variation
- Controlled environments
- Individualised learning
- Defined outcomes
Discipline expertise doesn’t mean you can teach
Implementing clinical training in a complex health care system is challenging
Understanding the complexity of medical education → relationships between:
- Learner characteristics, experiences, educational and professional context
- Learning task: looked at psychomotor and procedural skills but behavioural not addressed
- Instruction (deliberate practice under direct supervision in groups or individually, for as long as it takes)
- Teacher characteristics and qualifications (these are not well-defined), clinical experience doesn’t equal teaching experience
- Curriculum content and format, blend of presentations and practice sessions, expert demonstrations, orientation
- Assessment: content and format
- Enviroments should be supportive, needs to be infrastructure, time set aside
- Evaluation of the programme: target, format, consequences (Kirkpatrick levels)
- Society: politics and culture taken into account, patient safety, clinical opportunity, clinical advances
- Setting: wide variety of settings, including schools, workplaces
- Organisation: need to involve all stakeholders
Journals have a limited role to play in knowledge interaction, and appeal mainly to people who just want to do more research
Without context and explicit intention, medical education will never have the impact on society that it would like to (Charles Boelen)