(Click to enlarge draft of poster)
I need your help with a project!
My poster on blogging was accepted to the annual UCSF Academy of Medical Educator's Education Day. Feelings of joy and validation were quickly followed by terror and inadequacy.
In order to get my poster costs reimbursed, I have to get feedback from my co-authors and incorporate that feedback into the poster. As you can see from the poster title on top, I have no co-authors! Since you are all my virtual co-authors, I thought I'd solicit for comments and suggestions.
FYI: I put out in shout-out to the EMCrit Blog, The Poison Review, and Life in the Fast Lane in the Background section to make me sound more legitimate. Hope you established bloggers don't mind!
Two questions that the reviewers wanted me to address were:
- The use of the worldwide web for information dissemination and information exchange has far reaching impact, however, the quality of information posting and discussion remains to be major limitations in the method of teaching. How would you propose to address the quality of posting in the process?
- This is original and creative work and a great blog. I do wonder what medical education principles guided the content and whether there was any thought about learner objectives and educational outcomes?
I ask in the hopes that it won't be a Ferris Bueller movie moment (a.k.a. awkward silence, followed by "Anyone? Bueller... Bueller... Bueller?").
The poster is laid out nicely
ReplyDelete1: I would make the font size on your section headings larger... They look to be about the same size as the rest of the font.
the url for your website blends into the background when it is that small.
I think that is should be bigger or highlighted in come other way
I would change the title evaluation to results... ie methods and results. Its no different than a rct i would use the same terminology.
On the sam elines i would conatonate the last 2 sections into a "future directions" (or something like that) section (dissemination makes me think of pesticides)
I like the comparisons from 1.0 to 2.0 for the luddites out there.
ReplyDeleteI also like Evaluation -> Results. As a concrete result of how your blog enhances the education and career of ugrad med students, you can mention how I would not have volunteered to work SAEM if I had not seen it on your website.
I'm not sure if this answers the questions you proposed, but I'll give it a whirl...
ReplyDeleteFor the issue of QA with posting, I think that you need something that provides some real-time feedback and discussion. The comments section is useful, but limited and nearly impossible to maintain a discussion. I think this is where something like Goodle's Wave would be awesome if there is a way to link a wave to a blog post. This would allow for more real-time discussion (granted that all had a wave account). To optimize this, you would probably have to set aside a time (i.e. Thursdays at 6P EST) to maximize the number of active commenters. Another option would be to hold a periodic talkcast (I don't know a whole lot about them, but they are something like an online radio show that people can interact and listen to. The crew over at tuaw.com do this all the time for Apple stuff).
For your second "question" (it's like a three-in-one), I work my way through it. The principle(s) you followed were - This current generation is so connected and very computer/web savvy. I want to create an educational resource that connects with them, provides short bursts of content or gives them something they can take away with them (the paucis verbis cards). We just discussed this at the teaching fellowship session in Dallas (and I gave your blog a shout-out to everyone there).
I think some of your objectives for your learners are to (in no particular order) 1) create a reputable online resource with reliable and up-to-date information (pearls). 2) to address the learning needs of the current generation of adult learners.
As for outcomes, this is a little more tricky, but I think you're on the right track with what you have - there is just more data to get. Visits are useful, but what about RSS subscribers? PV Card/podcast/etc downloads? Searches on the blog itself? How many people clicked on a link "out" of the site (i.e. you link to some cool software and people click on it to check it out from the blog instead of searching Google)?
Another way to gauge outcomes would be to post some e-learning modules and request that they are used by the readers of the blog. This can give two-fold feedback. 1) The reader can complete the module and give direct feedback. 2) The reader can distribute the module to his/her residency program and collect feedback from the residents.
Again, I'm not sure if this really addresses your questions, but I hope it's still helpful.
Jim
Univ. of Maryland EM
WOW! I should ask for help more often! This is really great info and the comments are extremely helpful.
ReplyDeleteTAKU: I'm unfortunately bound by the templated headers that the conference has laid out. I agree - I also prefer the more traditional headers. I'll incorporate your suggestions about the font. Good eye.
RXNMAN: I'm glad you liked the section comparing Web 1.0 to 2.0. I wasn't sure if this was too basic, but then again - I'm always surprised by how many luddites there are in academia! Not sure how to incorporate your getting into SAEM as a volunteer, but I love it that you get an opportunity to participate in a major national meeting.
JIM: Gosh, thanks for such well thought-out answers to the difficult questions. You pose some really interesting ideas. Specifically, you've got me thinking about how this blog might evolve to incorporate virtual "office hours" or a live interactive podcast/webcast.
Additionally I really concur with your points about the objectives and outcomes. Right now, I only have 17 RSS subscribers, partly because I think most people don't know what RSS is.
I also love the idea of posting e-modules for the readership. You've certainly given me lots to think about. Oh, and thanks for the mention at the ACEP Teaching Fellowship. I'm honored!
Very interesting post and responses to the post. I appreciate the useful information
ReplyDelete@Michelle - Glad you found my thoughts useful! I'll think about it some more and see if anything else witty comes to mind.
ReplyDeleteMichelle,
ReplyDelete(My previous comment seemed to get sucked into the ether, so ignore if this is going through twice)
Thanks for the mention on your poster!
I have been a fan of your blog since its inception.
One question that I have been pondering: do online educational activities such as blogs and podcasts have any potential to aid academic advancement. I would be doing in it regardless, but do you think promotion committees give any credence to these activities? It would seem online education generates more tangible statistics than offline, conventional teaching.
scott
EMCrit Blog
http://blog.emcrit.org
Scott: I added a new section at the end of the poster called "The Future" to broach exactly this question. How do web 2.0 educators get credit for all the teaching they do? Such teaching is still considered something like a hobby, at best, in the eyes of traditional departments and promotions committees.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think online education generates more stats from a educator delivery standpoint like you say, but it's hard to measure if the learner "received" or learned the information. Learning outcomes are going to be stumbling point for promotions committees.
I'm acutely struggling with this overall issue, since I'm up for a small merit increase soon.
Keep up the great work that you do, Scott.
Hi Michelle,
ReplyDelete"The... quality of information posting and discussion remains to be major limitations in the method of teaching. How would you propose to address the quality of posting in the process?"
I suspect that the quality of posts on your blog, EmCrit.org and The Poison Review exceeds >75% of what is published medical journals...
For me, an important question is how does the blog reader know that what they are reading is quality? Readers can check the authors qualifications, but are then left with trust in authority. They can also check the post references, but that requires effort. Yet blogs have an advantage over other media. In some ways blogs have a more open peer review system than journal publications, as they can be discussed freely and openly in the comments sections or in other social media such as twitter or buzz (the latter being uncontrolled by the post author!). This can lead to immediate corrections or further discussion.
Word of mouth recommendation is really how blogs thrive and survive. What we need is for more of our emergency medicine colleagues to catch a ride on the 'web 2.0 rollercoaster' (http://lifeinthefastlane.com/2009/07/web-20-for-emergency-physicians/) and strengthen our online community. You are right to spell out the basics re: web 2.0. I had an interesting experience speaking at the ACEM Winter Symposium last year on this very subject... the general degree of ignorance was astounding - yet the response was very positive. Mind you, a whole year has passed since then and Australians are bound to be much more backward than you lot ;-)
Really great poster Michelle - with some really great comments in response to your post... what more validation does an educational blog need?
Chris
PS. Of course we don't mind the mention!
Chris: Excellent point about readers NOT being able to tell the blog's quality. I agree that word of mouth and site traffic/longevity are indirect measures of quality. Maybe what we need is a universal "certifier" of legitimacy. It's kind of like what Webicina.com is doing.
ReplyDeleteAs for general ignorance about what web 2.0 is, it's universal and not just in Australia. Even here in the Silicon Valley, it's shocking how little people know about it.
Michelle:
ReplyDeleteVery good poster. I too especially liked the section comparing Web 1.0 with Web 2.0. And I've been a long fan of "Academic Life in Emergency Medicine".
As for quality control, I tend to look at the roll of a medical blog somewhat differently. The fact is that the quality control procedure for traditional medical literature is -- in many instances -- a complete failure. Peer review is unreliable, and even the most prestigious journals publish papers that poorly conceived, poorly written and edited, and at times corrupt. Since the beginning of my career I've found the best quality control apparatus for emergency medicine literature to be "Emergency Medical Abstracts". (No affiliation or conflict of interest to declare.) If the quality of their discussion and criticism of the medical literature were of poor quality, I'm sure the enterprise would have failed long ago.
So I enjoy the "outlaw" status of the blogosphere,and I think one important function for a medical blog is to provide timely and independent quality control for what is published in journals. I would certainly be opposed to any attempt to appoint an official body to "certify" quality. Part of what makes the Web 2.0 so interesting is that it self-corrects so rapidly. Despite Wikipedia's open platform, I find the material there to be at least as reliable as that found anywhere else, and can't resist linking to it repeatedly since on so many topics they have the best information available on the web. There are so many medical blogs that I think those that don't deliver quality will just disappear.
And thanks so much for the "link" on your poster.
Leon
The Poison Review
http://www.thepoisonreview.com
G'day again,
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with Leon's comment - particularly the myth of journal quality and the fantastic outlaw imagery - he seems to embrace a Spencerian philosophy: 'survival of the fittest (blogs)'. To survive and thrive we need symbiosis - we need the Web 2.0 emergency medicine community to grow and continue to interact - the comments on this post are a perfect example.
Cheers,
Chris Nickson
Validation of information is always an issue.
ReplyDeleteHistorically peer review by esteemed journal reviewers has (on the whole) led to high quality information being deposited in structured information silos for information dissemination, ratification, comment and storage. This system is still highly subjective, often requires subscription access and is too slow to publish.
The evolution of medical education through blogging lacks this structured peer review at source and in part relies on the credentials and online reputation of the blogger to ratify the blog content; the support of the blogging community to validate the accuracy of the content and the ethical integrity of the blog author to justify the disseminated content.
It is certainly a fine line between the rational subjectivity of the medical blogosphere and the defined objectivity of the peer-reviewed journal...
Integrity and trust must be first earned from the medblogging community. High quality objective and subjective postings stimulate debate on the blog comments sections and within the social media platforms. High quality posts coupled with guest posting, tiered comments and blog-links are essential to see the growth of a blog within the medical blogoshpere, but do not necessarily equate to an increased readership from the medical non-bloggers (the majority)
These non-believers rely upon their new-found best friend 'the ubiquitous search engine' to help them find their high quality information. This normally leads to a wide variety of returned results for medical queries ranging form the useful to the useless. Unfortunately with the arrival of 'Google Blog Search' a lot of the HQ medical blog posts have disappeared from the search results page and have been transferred to a more defined sub-repository of information. The non-believers often deem this to be a 'less reliable' source of medical information.
Previously medical blogs relied upon search engines such as Google to elevate the most useful and pertinent blog postings to the top of a search result page to assist the general reader and web surfer. Life in the Fast Lane was lost to Google search and Google blog search in October 2009 and longer deemed a credible source of medical information. With this 'search traffic' lost, we rely on validation of content to come form the med blogging community itself with the use of social media and social/professional networks to help 'define' good content and rationalise content dissemination.
The development of blogging communities certainly helps to share this content amongst like-minded bloggers, but does not address the issue of wider dissemination for educational benefit.
Programmes such as http://scienceblips.dailyradar.com/ which facilitates a 'voting system' is a start to collating high quality content and allowing the science and medicine community to define good content. Other blogging sources for medical education such as http://mededucation.ontoplist.com/ and stumble upon are useful in sharing feeds, but again this relies upon the physician to have a basic grasp of the internet, RSS and information sharing - and this is still a long way off
This leaves the educators themselves, the face-to-face educators, the teachers, the academics to spread the word and validate information on medical blogs...this is where your poster is very useful. Stimulating the minds of the medical community cannot be achieved through the web alone, we need to draw them into the interweb thingy through more traditional media such as posters, journals and textbooks. Even podcasts and online tv such as with EM:RAP are great resources to help spread the word
Keep up the great work
Mike
GREAT to see this - and good luck.
ReplyDeleteI help with a clinical research site, and we've just started using Research Blogging - http://researchblogging.org/, we've found it not only gives access to a medical research community, it also enables you to create citation links for students - so readers can click through to look at the original research.
Hope you get lots of interest in the poster. - site's like yours are vital for education.
These are wonderfully insightful comments and written with much more eloquency than I could have come up with! I concur with everyone's points, especially about rethinking the gold standard of objectivity and quality being only found in peer-reviewed journals.
ReplyDeleteI imagine medical blogs are following the trail that Wikipedia has blazed for us. No one ever believed that it would become such an universally useful resource.
Currently the leap from traditional print journals/textbooks to blogs/social media as a source of medical information is just TOO FAR and TOO OUT THERE for traditional medical academicians. My poster will hopefully be one step in the right direction towards bridging the two worlds of academia-- Writing a tradition poster about a Web 2.0 technology. Baby steps.
In the meantime, the EM blogging community is constantly growing and getting stronger by the minute. It's a testament to all the great material that all my fellow bloggers are posting. Perhaps a group of us should set out to write a white-paper or position article to publish in Acad Emerg Med or Acad Med journal? It's another way to try to bridge our two worlds. Publishing a manuscript about Web 2.0 technology.
In the end, blogs and other web 2.0 educational approaches are the new "disruptive technology" in education.
By definition, "disruptive technology" is a term used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by being lower priced or designed for a different set of consumers. In this case, blogs are disrupting the outdated and stagnant educational approaches in medical education.
Great idea on a jointly published article Michelle - count me in!
ReplyDeleteMike had an editorial on Web 2.0 in 'Emergency Medicine Australasia' about 2 years ago - its online here: http://lifeinthefastlane.com/2008/12/the-times-they-are-a-changing/
Good luck with the poster!
Chris
Chris: Thanks for the link. You Aussie folks are WAY ahead of the curve. This article was from 2008! It's like you had a crystal ball looking into the future.
ReplyDeleteActually Michelle, from behind, Mike's head does look a bit like a crystal ball...
ReplyDelete