Social Media in Medical Education

Our new article: Incorporating Social Media into Medical Education

2011-04-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

Our latest article was published this month in AAIM Insight. In this article we discuss reasons to adopt an barriers for adoption of social media in medical education.

Saarinen C, Arora V, Fergusen B, Chretien K. Incorporating social media into medical education. Academic Internal Medicine Insight. 9(1):12-13, 19.
http://www.im.org/Publications/Insight/Archives/v9i1/Pages/Article5.aspx

We'd love to hear from you so please use the comments form on this blog to share your thoughts after you have read the article. Thanks!

Twitter as an Audience Response System

2011-02-18T01:39:00.000-08:00

Dr. Matthew Mintz (@drmintz), a wonderful colleague and fellow medical educator at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, has written a great post on his blog about his experiment using Twitter as an Audience Response System. He shares lessons learned and invites discussion from other medical educators who have tried this/might try this technique.

Of note, Dr. Mintz was a participant in one of our Social Media in Medical Education workshops last Fall! This makes a workshop coordinator extremely happy.

I had heard of the tool he used - SAP Business Objects Power Point Twitter Tools and have considered using it during presentations to make them more interactive. I've also been intrigued by the idea of using Twitter as a backchannel during large lectures, although lack the opportunity to try it out as my teaching of medical students and residents is limited to small groups.

Has anyone else tried this? Agree with Dr. Mintz that one major hurdle is that most students do not use Twitter.

#meded professionals weigh in on social media management

2010-11-19T12:36:00.000-08:00

Assignment: How do you find time for social media?

Responses

@carrie_at_umass writes: Making time for social media
@sarahstewart on the subject: How to make time for blogging
...and an earlier post by Sarah on topic: Do you have time to learn

Assignment: How do you find time for social media?

2010-11-11T06:40:00.000-08:00

One of the most common concerns expressed by medical educators regarding social media is time. People have asked me and my colleagues presenting the 'Incorporating social media into medical education' workshop series: how do you find time to do this?

Time management is unique to an individual because everyone has their own work schedule, family needs and personal hobbies and interests to consider. Therefore, there is no tried-and-true method or boilerplate strategy for incorporating social media into your daily or weekly routine.

How much or how little content you digest is up to you. How much content you create and publish is up to you. So where is the threshold? How much is too much and how much is too little? Without scheduling time to practice and participate, it is easy to abandon efforts and forgo mastering social media skills. Without discipline it is easy to lose a great deal of time trying to keep up with massive amounts of information. What some of us have done is create a social media diet for ourselves, a regimen for managing content consumption, and trained ourselves to produce content on a regular basis.

This week, in order to answer the question, let's find out if there are any commonalities or strategic moves among those of us who indulge in user generated web content. Write a blog post about your social media time management strategy, or share a reflective piece on your professional adoption and implementation of social media. You can answer the question directly or list tips for social media newbies. Because we all have differing roles in academic medicine - as clinicians, basic scientists, librarians, educators, students, residents, fellows, administrators - it will be interesting to read everyone's perspectives.

Share a link to your blog here as a comment and/or post a link to us via Twitter (@social_meded). If possible post your blog article on Friday November 19, 2010. (This is an exercise is social media time management!)

If you are a social media consumer and producer but do not have a blog or do not wish to post the article on your blog, you can share it here. Contact Carrie for details.

Social Media in Medical Education | AAIM2010

2010-10-21T06:04:00.001-07:00

Slides from our Social Media workshop for medical educators at Academic Internal Medicine Week 2010. Presenters represent 3 different universities and different roles in medical education. Please contact us for further information and re-use or for guest speaking engagements. We do birthday parties.

Social Media in Medical Education | AAIM2010

An Introduction To Podcasting: Audio From Our #smime Workshop Podcasting Session

2010-10-16T12:21:00.000-07:00

Audio from the hands-on podcasting session at the Social Media in Medical Education workshop at AAIM 2010.

After being introduced to the basics of podcasting, the group recorded this quick snippet to introduce itself to the podcasting world!

An Introduction To Social Media: Audio From Our #smime Workshop Presentation

2010-10-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

The presentation portion of the Social Media in Medical Education workshop at AAIM 2010.

Covering blogging by Kathy Chretien (@MotherinMed), Twitter by Vinny Arora (@FutureDocs), wikis by Carrie Saarinen (@carrie_at_umass), and podcasting by Ben Ferguson (@pritzkerpodcast).

Podcasting!

2010-10-14T11:02:00.001-07:00

We will be publishing an actual podcast episode that will be created during the AAIM Workshop. Stay tuned for more info. This file serves as an introduction to the podcasting portion of the SMiME workshop.

The final product will eventually be available here as well as on iTunes; if you'd like to subscribe using another podcatcher, its RSS feed will be http://socialmediainmeded.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/podcast.

Why do you Tweet me this way?

2010-10-11T16:46:00.000-07:00

Twitter. It's everywhere. You have probably heard major news network anchors and assorted personalities cheerfully invite you to 'follow' them on Twitter. Newspapers use Twitter; their online versions speckled with little blue Twitter icons, begging to be clicked. Universities, hospitals, major corporations, car dealerships, grocery stores - they all have Twitter accounts.

What is Twitter?

According to their website, "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

Imagine asking a question and getting answers within minutes from colleagues, friends, co-workers, anyone within your network. This is what Twitter does.

What is Twitter used for?

You post, or 'tweet' a question or comment, then your network sees what you posted and comments back to you. Twitter is faster than email because people don't wait until they are back in the office to reply to you, as they often do with email. You can share and receive messages anywhere because Twitter is easy to use on your mobile phone, Blackberry, iPhone, or PDA.

What you post on Twitter can be anything - you can send a question or request for information, make a comment about something you heard or read, or share a link to an online journal or newspaper article.

Twitter & You

Twitter is confusing, but it is a dynamic communication tool.

For example, you might read an interesting article you wish to share, such as "Captivating story about med school student w/brain cancer researching a cure. @ ChicagoTribune.com".

You might use Twitter to spread awareness of an issue, such as Dr Anas Younes who uses Twitter to share information for those who live and work with Hodgkin's lymphoma. "Why Do I Tweet?" Dr Anas Younes, on Medicine and Social Media

You might also use Twitter to look for feedback or input, such as blog writer, Twitter user and Primary Care doc Kevin Pho who frequently asks for input on topics that interest him. "Is Twitter necessary for physicians and other medical professionals?"

Special thanks to Bonnie Anderson, in beautiful St. Louis Missouri, for assistance with this article.
Originally posted by Carrie Saarinen at 7/24/2009 on her TechNotes blog.

SlideShare: Publish your presentation graphics online

2010-09-30T09:25:00.000-07:00

What is SlideShare?

SlideShare.net is a free online service that allows you to publish your presentation graphics (ie PowerPoint, Keynote) online. You can create a profile, upload presentations and associated documents, and share them publicly or privately with other SlideShare users. Your presentations can then be searched for, accessed, viewed, rated, tagged, saved, and shared by many other people. You can use SlideShare as a means to archive your presentations then include them in your website, blog or other social media profile, such as LinkedIn, to demonstrate your expertise. You can search for and find other users' presentations to view and share.

Do I want to share my slides?

SlideShare is a social media tool. What that means is SlideShare.net is a place where you can find other people with similar interests (social) and see what they are creating (media). If you want to either learn about the wine industry or medical simulation, odds are you can find presentations about that subject on SlideShare.net. Finding those topics on SlideShare means you can connect with people who are interested in that subject, just like you. Reviewing their content can either inform you of something new and lead you to other resources, or remind you of your own expertise and perhaps compel you to share your knowledge via SlideShare.

By contributing your slides you demonstrate your expertise and allow other people to learn from you. Does this mean you should create brand new slides just for SlideShare? You could, but most users don't. Most users upload their slides after they have given a presentation or series of lectures. It's a way to share the slides with people who attended your lecture or seminar AND share them with people who were unable to attend.

What are the risks?

To avoid negative effects of sharing your slides publicly: Publish under your own name. Don't publish someone else's slides - publish only your own work. Practice copyright adherence in all that you create. Double-check all materials prior to publishing on SlideShare. Do not - ever! - publish confidential material. Do not publish company or institution information (ie internal information).

View my SlideShare!

After you have started an account and published a slideset or two, share it! Let people know that you published something so they can check it out. If it is a lecture you present at a national conference, email a link to your colleagues. If it is a slideset from a seminar you led, let the attendees know they can review the material online. If you create a tutorial on cooking with wine, let your friends and family know.

You can view my SlideShare profile here: http://www.slideshare.net/carrisaari, or check out this slideset on Plagiarism in Academic Medicine which I created for a graduate school course: http://www.slideshare.net/carrisaari/plagiarism-in-academic-medicine.

Hello from the UK!

2010-08-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

Thank you for letting me make a contribution here. I would love to see a multi-author blog like this become a hub for the global community of medical educators.
Here is a short introduction to why I decided to start using social media:

A few months ago I gave a presentation in my university about how I was trying to use new media with Blackboard to help the students that I teach.

Integrating Web 2.0 with Blackboard from Anne Marie Cunningham on Vimeo.

Some of slightly contentious issues that might get a debate going:

1. What safeguards should we take when blogging about our experiences of teaching? Here is a post that I have written about teaching communication skills, and another about where first year medical students told me they looked for resources. I hope you will agree that there is a lot to be learned from these stories, and that I have not identified any individual students. But what should be our boundaries?

2. Should we expect students to engage in public discourse? Would it be fair to require students to write or reflect in public (assuming that there was no risk to patient confidentiality)? Here is my blog post: "In praise of the walled garden (VLE)". That doesn't mean that I am not happy to try and make it as easy as possible for students to access any content I generate through the use of tools such as Facebook. This is a Facebook page that I set up to support my teaching. I tried to make sure that students knew that this was not a space that was appropriate for interaction. I did this to minimise any risk to patient confidentiality, but also because I wasn't sure that I wanted another place to check (beyond Blackbood forums and email) for student queries. I did get one or two queries to my personal account on twitter but that was OK!

I hope that will get things started!

How is social media being used in medical education?

2010-08-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

We're looking for real-life examples of how social media tools are being used in medical education today. In part, we'd like to showcase a range of how educators are innovating using social media tools. Also, we're looking for a case to serve as debate fodder: we want medical education leaders to be able to fully discuss a case's potential pro's and con's.

Some real-life examples:
Twitter account for advising medical students
Reflective writing/narrative medicine blogs
Facebook page for medical school course
Podcasts for lectures, general school information
Twitter/Facebook pages for medical school admissions office

How are others using social media tools in meded?