Survey of the Impact of Twitter in Medical Education
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Abstract
Background
Web 2.0 has the potential to enhance learning experiences and deepen learners’ engagement within digital learning environments. It encourages interaction and helps foster communities of practice. These new methods of pedagogy have been embraced throughout the medical specialties, from anaesthetics to dermatology, and critical care to nephrology.
Twitter has a wide variety of uses within medicine. It has been found to be an accurate tool to measure disease levels, as well as for publishing literature. Physicians are also using Twitter to follow medical conferences remotely as well as actively engage in clinical discussions. Vygotsky’s concept of social constructivism describes the Twitter learner well – one that actively constructs new concepts when learning occurs through social engagement around shared problems or tasks.
Objectives
- To observe the effect of Twitter as a research tool for medical education
- To investigate how social media platforms like Twitter can be used as an educational tool for medical professionals.
- To describe the communities of practice of medical education that exist in Twitter
Methods
A structured online questionnaire was posted using Google Forms for 30 days between February and March 2013. Invitations to complete the survey were sent via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and other online forums. Respondents were asked to answer sixteen questions on their use of social media platforms and attitudes towards social media. This is a report of responses received via Twitter.
Results
1090 respondents completed the survey of which 683 were contacted via twitter. The greatest response was achieved on Day 1 with 245 retweets. Further surges in responses were seen on Days 5, 17 and 24 which coincided with either repeat tweets or retweets within the online medical community.
Responses were received globally from the United Kingdom to as far as Australia and Singapore by Day 1 and were continued to be received from across the globe as the survey remained open. Respondents originated from a total of 37 countries.
***Research in Progress***
Conclusions
As Timimi (2012) states, “social media has advantages to include profound reach, immediate availability, and archived presence and broad accessibility.â€
***Research in Progress***
Web 2.0 has the potential to enhance learning experiences and deepen learners’ engagement within digital learning environments. It encourages interaction and helps foster communities of practice. These new methods of pedagogy have been embraced throughout the medical specialties, from anaesthetics to dermatology, and critical care to nephrology.
Twitter has a wide variety of uses within medicine. It has been found to be an accurate tool to measure disease levels, as well as for publishing literature. Physicians are also using Twitter to follow medical conferences remotely as well as actively engage in clinical discussions. Vygotsky’s concept of social constructivism describes the Twitter learner well – one that actively constructs new concepts when learning occurs through social engagement around shared problems or tasks.
Objectives
- To observe the effect of Twitter as a research tool for medical education
- To investigate how social media platforms like Twitter can be used as an educational tool for medical professionals.
- To describe the communities of practice of medical education that exist in Twitter
Methods
A structured online questionnaire was posted using Google Forms for 30 days between February and March 2013. Invitations to complete the survey were sent via e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and other online forums. Respondents were asked to answer sixteen questions on their use of social media platforms and attitudes towards social media. This is a report of responses received via Twitter.
Results
1090 respondents completed the survey of which 683 were contacted via twitter. The greatest response was achieved on Day 1 with 245 retweets. Further surges in responses were seen on Days 5, 17 and 24 which coincided with either repeat tweets or retweets within the online medical community.
Responses were received globally from the United Kingdom to as far as Australia and Singapore by Day 1 and were continued to be received from across the globe as the survey remained open. Respondents originated from a total of 37 countries.
***Research in Progress***
Conclusions
As Timimi (2012) states, “social media has advantages to include profound reach, immediate availability, and archived presence and broad accessibility.â€
***Research in Progress***
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