Social learning in large online audiences of health professionals: Improving dialogue with automated tools

Abstract

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) bring about the opportunity to reach large international audiences of health professionals. However, change in clinical practice eventually needs social interaction, to validate the new knowledge with trusted peers, in the agreement and adoption phases of change. How can meaningful dialogue take place without scaling up expert tutoring? The extensive experience from social network applications such as Facebook or Twitter provides an opportunity to improve dialogue among peers and with experts automatically and seamlessly, as part of what is called social learning analytics (SLA). Large amounts of data about prior relationships among participants in a course-similar to Facebook and other social applications-, among participants and course materials-similar to Netflix or Amazon-, as well as natural language processing, could be obtained, and then analyzed and used to improve the educational processes and outcomes. In this paper, a series of examples with pilot uses of SLA in the context of massive online courses for physicians and other health care professionals are described. They include: 1) Forecasting of academic accomplishment. 2) Teambased face-to-face learning as part of massive online courses. 3) Analysis of existing connections, to ensure the most connected discussion groups of course participants. 4) Facebook-like dialogue with other course participants who are previously related, as well as with the Course Faculty. 5) Crowdsourcing and friendsourcing, for recommending useful study materials or future courses. 6) Natural language processing, to classify posts in online discussions. The intent of this manuscript is to create awareness in the medical education community that this type of analysis is possible and potentially useful, to receive feedback on the possible functionalities as well as critique these developments, and to create a space for collaboration in research and innovation projects with other interested

Concluding Commentary: A Call for evidence in CPD and Lifelong Learning

“…The intent of their work "was to create awareness in the medical education community that this type of analysis is possible and potentially useful; to receive feedback on the possible functionalities as well as critique these developments, and to create a space for collaboration in research and innovation projects with other interested parties". (Margolis A, López-Arredondo, García S, Rubido N,, et al, 2019) Stube and colleagues developed an online community focused on clinical excellence they named "CLOSLER" aiming to be "Closer to Osler". Conceptually supported on the professional obligation of pursuing excellence in healthcare delivery, the Miller Coulson Academy of Clinical Excellence (MCACE) (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) puts special emphasis in communication, interpersonal skills, professionalism and humanism, diagnostic acumen, and negotiation of the healthcare system to attain professional excellence.…”

“…The intent of their work “was to create awareness in the medical education community that this type of analysis is possible and potentially useful; to receive feedback on the possible functionalities as well as critique these developments, and to create a space for collaboration in research and innovation projects with other interested parties”. ( Margolis A, López-Arredondo, García S, Rubido N,, et al ., 2019 )…”

¿Cómo migrar de un congreso tradicional a un congreso semi-presencial o totalmente virtual? Un caso de estudio de éxito frente a la pandemia COVID-19

“…Aunque durante esta primera semana se realizó un webinar de apertura en vivo, la mayoría de las actividades fueron diseñadas para ser asíncronas y por tanto no requerían una fecha y hora específicas para participar; vale la pena mencionar que dentro de estas actividades se incluyeron conferencias magistrales, simulaciones clínicas y foros de discusión. Varios expositores de habla portuguesa e inglesa fueron subtitulados al español y la interacción entre participantes y docentes se llevó a cabo por una plataforma similar a Facebook en donde se tienen en cuenta las relaciones personales para generar confianza y fomentar un diálogo significativo entre los participantes 4 .…”