Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Room 515, 5/F, William MW Mong Block, 21 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA.
BMC Med Educ. 2022 Jul 27;22(1):577. doi: 10.1186/s12909-022-03639-6.
Twitter has gained increasing popularity and attention as a professional learning environment to share knowledge, exchange information, make connections, and build networks. To evaluate the effectiveness of Twitter-facilitated online discussions, a community of inquiry framework could be used with the three key elements of online environments: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. This study aims to explore how medical educators participate in synchronous online discussions on Twitter using #MedEdChat, and how participants' perceptions toward the three presences, sense of connectedness and interactions influenced their online satisfaction.
A survey invitation was emailed using the medical education email list DR-ED and was posted during the weekly Twitter conversations in December 2020, to solicit participants who have been involved in any kind of #MedEdChat activities (i.e., read transcripts or directly participate in discussions).
A total of 68 people responded. Through descriptive analysis and path analysis, we found that almost half of the survey respondents were lurkers on #MedEdChat who read others' tweets or transcripts. In addition, participants mainly used Twitter for resource sharing, collaborating with others, and networking. Participants rated teaching (i.e., moderator) presence the highest, followed by overall satisfaction, cognitive presence, sense of connectedness, social presence, and interactions. Among them, sense of connectedness and cognitive presence were significantly associated with participants' overall satisfaction.
This study provided significant implications for using Twitter as a professional learning community to conduct online discussion activities. Facilitators could think of ways to improve participation by providing tutorials on how to participate on Twitter discussions, introduce or ask new participants to introduce themselves, facilitate discussion with intriguing questions, and invite medical educators of different roles as well as medical students and residents to join to bring in diverse perspectives.
Twitter 作为一个专业的学习环境，在分享知识、交流信息、建立联系和建立网络方面越来越受欢迎和关注。为了评估 Twitter 促进在线讨论的有效性，可以使用询证法框架，其中包含在线环境的三个关键要素：认知参与度、社会参与度和教学参与度。本研究旨在探讨医学教育者如何使用#MedEdChat 参与同步在线讨论，以及参与者对这三个存在（认知参与度、社会参与度和教学参与度）的看法、联系感和互动如何影响他们的在线满意度。
通过医学教育电子邮件列表 DR-ED 向参与者发送电子邮件邀请，并在 2020 年 12 月的每周 Twitter 对话期间发布，以征集参与过任何形式的#MedEdChat 活动的参与者（即阅读记录或直接参与讨论）。
共有 68 人做出回应。通过描述性分析和路径分析，我们发现，调查受访者中有近一半是#MedEdChat 的潜水员，他们阅读他人的推文或记录。此外，参与者主要使用 Twitter 进行资源共享、与他人合作和建立网络。参与者对教学（即主持人）参与度的评价最高，其次是总体满意度、认知参与度、联系感、社会参与度和互动。其中，联系感和认知参与度与参与者的总体满意度显著相关。
本研究为使用 Twitter 作为专业学习社区开展在线讨论活动提供了重要启示。促进者可以考虑提供有关如何参与 Twitter 讨论的教程、介绍或要求新参与者自我介绍、提出有趣的问题来促进讨论以及邀请不同角色的医学教育者以及医学生和住院医师加入，以引入不同的观点，从而提高参与度。
