Social media, FOAMed in medical education and knowledge sharing: Local experiences with international perspective

Abstract

Social media, through the Internet and other web-based technologies, have become a means of communication and knowledge-sharing. In this article, we provide details about the social media traffic of various scientific activities, the organizations of which we have played an active role in. We also provide information in our native language through our FOAMed website, which has been published for about 30 months, with us acting as editors. We are comparing these local and limited ventures with examples from the world and aim to remind that social media sources play a very important role in sharing knowledge in medical training and encouraging local initiatives, like ours, with limited resources.

Establishment of an Undergraduate FOAM Initiative: International Emergency Medicine (iEM) Education Project for Medical Students

“…Acilci.net , a FOAM blog in Turkish, was reported to have been visited 3,500 times in its first month. 36 St.Emlyn’s blog grew from 3497 to 36,377 average monthly views between 2012–2016. 37 Other reports from the Academic Life in Emergency Medicine blog examined the activity and impact of FOAM for specific topics such as resident well-being, team-based learning, and resident teachers.…”

“…Interestingly, a FOAM blog publishing in Turkish reported that 10.6% of views were from 111 different countries, possibly doctors from Turkic origins. 36 Similarly, the geographically dispersed access to iEM platforms may be attributed to the users who speak English as a primary or secondary language; however, built-in automatic translation placed on our website may also have facilitated the use of the website for users with little or no English proficiency. 36 Our findings may imply that FOAM platforms in English seem to have considerable international reach, but how publishing in other prevalent or multiple languages might affect the international reach and the distribution of views remains to be discovered in future studies.…”

Knowledge Sharing on Social Media: State of the Art in 2018

“…Looking at individuals, motivational factors behind sharing play a major role and influence the process (Razmerita & Nielsen, 2016;Sirous & Watson-Patridge, 2016). The explicit and tacit knowledge is shared and managed across social media in various frameworks: realtime dispersion of knowledge (Cevik et al, 2016), co-production and sharing of knowledge on trip content communities (Edwards et al, 2017), knowledge sharing in online communities (M. Hajli & M. Hajli, 2013), dispersion of knowledge on Twitter (Xu et al, 2015), or enterprise social media and knowledge sharing practices (Rode, 2016). Some authors are skeptical and believe that social media limits knowledge sharing (Gibbs & Eisenberg, 2013).…”

“…The content captures different knowledge on a topic observed and presented on social media. Social media has become a significant, affordable and reliable communication channel with strong potential for sharing explicit and tacit knowledge online (Cevik, Akoglu, Eroglu, Dogan, & Altunci, 2016). Generally, social media provides immense capabilities for knowledge dislocation in a virtual environment and is suitable for both individuals and knowledge workers to facilitate knowledge flows (Rode, 2016).…”

Learning in the Digital Era – Awareness and Usage of Free Open Access Meducation among Emergency Department Doctors

“…These interactive databases have created a dynamic online community and a family of FOAM users worldwide [9]. Since FOAM leans towards self-directed problem-based learning, various medical schools across the world have also embedded it into their curriculum [10-12].…”