What medical educators need to know about “Web 2.0”

Abstract

"Web 2.0" describes a collection of web-based technologies which share a user-focused approach to design and functionality, where users actively participate in content creation and editing through open collaboration between members of communities of practice. The current generation of students in medical school made Web 2.0 websites such as Facebook and MySpace some of the most popular on the Internet. Medical educators and designers of educational software applications can benefit from understanding and applying Web 2.0 concepts to the curriculum and related websites. Health science schools have begun experimenting with wikis, blogs and other Web 2.0 applications and have identified both advantages and potential problems with these relatively open, student-focused communication tools. This paper reviews the unique features of Web 2.0 technologies, addresses questions regarding potential pitfalls and suggests valuable applications in health science education.

Emergency medicine residents’ beliefs about contributing to an online collaborative slideshow

“…[4][5][6][7][8] "Social media" is defined as a group of network technologies that share a participatory approach for creating content through open architecture that facilitates collaboration. 9 Collaborative writing applications (CWAs) are a category of social media that allows multiple authors to contribute synchronously and asynchronously to a single document. 10,11 New CWAs, such as Google Docs TM and wikis, are rapidly gaining popularity in medical education because they support free and open collaboration and decentralize content production.…”

“…10,11 New CWAs, such as Google Docs TM and wikis, are rapidly gaining popularity in medical education because they support free and open collaboration and decentralize content production. 4,7,9,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18] Constructivist learning principles support the use of social media in medical education. Instead of passively receiving information, students can actively create course content, and by doing so increase their comprehension and knowledge retention.…”

Social Media and Alcohol: Summary of Research, Intervention Ideas and Future Study Directions

“…Studies in this area have examined a variety of social media platforms, early studies in this area focused on MySpace and Facebook. Several studies have illustrated that adolescents' displays on these two sites frequently include portrayal of health risk behaviors related to alcohol, other substances, and sexual behaviors (Hinduja & Patchin, 2008;McGee & Begg, 2008;Moreno, Parks, & Richardson, 2007;Moreno, Parks, Zimmerman, Brito, & Christakis, 2009). Alcohol displays may include text (i.e.…”

Are We Having Fun Yet? Institutional Resistance and the Introduction of Play and Experimentation into Learning Innovation through Social Media

“…At an institutional level, concerns around appropriate usage (Garcia et al, 2011), the rules governing IT (Somekh, 2007) and a diversity of understandings around privacy and data security (McGee and Begg, 2008) have impacted significantly not just on the use of social media, but on the way academics and students understand and communicate the benefits and challenges to open scholarship and open learning that social media presents (Siemens and Weller, 2011;Fenwick, 2014). Resistance does not manifest itself as a simple, dichotomous yes/no choice in this context.…”