Medical Education Unit, The University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
Med Teach. 2008;30(3):308-12. doi: 10.1080/01421590701798729.
A wide range of social software has become readily available to young people. There is increasing interest in the exciting possibilities of using social software for undergraduate medical education.
To identify the nature and extent of the use of social software by first year medical students.
A structured self-administered questionnaire survey of 212 students.
Over 90 percent used instant messaging and social networking sites were highly used (70 percent). There was no significant difference between males and females. Blogs were read by about a fifth of students and a small number (8%) wrote their own blogs. A fifth of males stated that they were users of media sharing and contributed to wikis. Social bookmarking was rarely used by either sex.
Medical educators need to recognise the potential of social software in undergraduate medical education but it is essential that students maintain the informality and privacy of these sites. The challenge for all medical educators is how to integrate social software into current curricula and institutional Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs).
各种社交软件已经广泛普及到年轻人手中。利用社交软件辅助本科生医学教育的应用潜力正吸引着越来越多的关注。
了解医学生一年级学生使用社交软件的性质和程度。
对 212 名学生进行了结构化的自我管理问卷调查。
超过 90%的学生使用即时通讯软件，而社交网络网站的使用率很高（70%）。男生和女生之间没有显著差异。大约五分之一的学生阅读博客，少数（8%）学生自己写博客。五分之一的男生表示他们是媒体共享的使用者，并参与到维基百科中。社交书签在男女生中都很少使用。
医学教育者需要认识到社交软件在本科生医学教育中的潜力，但必须确保学生保持这些网站的非正式性和隐私性。所有医学教育者面临的挑战是如何将社交软件整合到当前的课程和机构虚拟学习环境（VLE）中。
