a digital ethnography of medical students who use twitter for
TRANSCRIPT
Key Literature in Medical Education: keylimepodcast.royalcollege.ca KeyLIME Abstract Reviewer: Linda Snell (@LindaSMedEd)
A Digital Ethnography of Medical Students who Use Twitter
for Professional Development
Reference: Chretien KC1,2, Tuck MG3,4, Simon M4, Singh LO5, Kind T4,6. A Digital Ethnography of Medical Students who Use Twitter for Professional Development. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2015 Nov;30(11):1673-80
Author Institutions: 1Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA 2School of Medicine and Health Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA 3Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Washington, DC, USA 4School of Medicine and Health Sciences, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA 5Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA 6Children's National Health System, Washington, DC, USA Tags
Clinical domain General
Educational domain Education research Undergraduate (medical school)
Background
We hear a lot about the negative aspects of the use of social media but rarely about potential positive effects or outcomes of the use of most types of social media. Twitter is one of the most commonly-used with hundreds of millions of active users and billions of tweets. In medicine, journals and organizations as well as individuals share relevant information and it has been identified as a learning tool. Despite many clinician educators being digital immigrants, we guide students in their professional development, education and career choice. We thus need to learn how to use and teach how to use social media effectively and professionally.
Purpose
To describe how and why medical students are using twitter for professional development. Questions: What is the culture of students who use Twitter for education? How do they use it? With whom do they interact? What do they value?
Type of paper
Research: ethnographic
Key Points on the Methods
Ethnography is a qualitative research framework that describes or interprets a cultural group or system, using observation of the group, interviews with key informants who can provide insights into the group, and examination of cultural artifacts and documents. Digital ethnography examines the culture of online groups, applying traditional ethnographic approaches to the online space. Target group: ‘Superusers’
1. First searched key words “medical student” and “med student” on Twitter.com; 2) existing public lists of medical students on Twitter 3) relevant hashtags (#medstudent, #meded); 4) soliciting referrals by current subjects (chain sampling); and 5) hosting a medical education “tweetchat.”. This gave 293 students
2. From these, added to a superuser list if they were observed to post professional content (for instance, sharing a journal article or live-tweeting a medical conference), interact with other medical students and faculty, and/or participate in professional Twitter “chats.” The authors give no frequency for these activities
‘Sub methods’:
1. Structured observations with field notes 2. Semi-structured interviews with 10 key informants 3. Network analysis looking at the local network of the individual (ego), and
looking at the connections (subnetwork) of key informants [centrality and clustering – this was discussed in Shapiro’s paper on a recent KeyLIME.
Coded and performed a solid qualitative inductive thematic analysis, ensuring trustworthiness
Key Outcomes
Students used Twitter thoughtfully and professionally. Super-users practiced ‘good Twitter citizenship’ - summarized in Box 1. Twitter supplemented med school education. Students valued: -access to up-to-date info, to individuals with different perspectives, to patients (not their own), to a community -‘voice’ - opportunity for advocacy, to create a digital footprint, and to ‘equalize’ Gaining a patient perspective was invaluable. Super users tend to have social, reciprocal relationships on Twitter more so than simple information retrieval – the authors think this may account for some of its added value. The authors cite connectivism as the relevant learning theory: ‘relates learning as a process of connecting information sources; nurturing these connections is needed for continual learning. A diversity of perspectives and opinions fuel learning and
knowledge, and the capacity to increase one’s knowledge is more important than what one currently knows.’ However, do ‘super users’ reflect the ‘normal’ student?
Key Conclusions
The authors conclude…’medical students who regularly used Twitter as a professional tool did so with thoughtfulness and purpose. It provided access and voice that supplemented their medical school experience. Their Twitter practices can serve as best practices for other students as well as faculty, in their lifelong learning and professional development.’
Spare Keys – other take home points for clinician educators
• Remind us of the principles of online professionalism.
• Little research exists about how we use social media for learning and professional development – this paper starts to fill this gap.
• I learned about: digital ethnography, connectivism…