Background: Prevailing health care structures and cultures restrict intraprofessional communication, inhibiting knowledge dissemination and impacting the translation of research into practice. Virtual communities may facilitate professional networking and knowledge sharing in and between health care disciplines. Objectives: This study aimed to review the literature on the use of social media by health care professionals in developing virtual communities that facilitate professional networking, knowledge sharing, and evidence-informed practice. Methods: An integrative literature review was conducted to identify research published between 1990 and 2015. Search strategies sourced electronic databases (PubMed, CINAHL), snowball references, and tables of contents of 3 journals. Papers that evaluated social media use by health care professionals (unless within an education framework) using any research design (except for research protocols or narrative reviews) were included. Standardized data extraction and quality assessment tools were used. Results: Overall, 72 studies were included: 44 qualitative (including 2 ethnographies, 26 qualitative descriptive, and 1 Q-sort) and 20 mixed-methods studies, and 8 literature reviews. The most common methods of data collection were Web-based observation (n=39), surveys (n=23), interviews (n=11), focus groups (n=2), and diaries (n=1). Study quality was mixed. Social media studied included Listservs (n=22), Twitter (n=18), general social media (n=17), discussion forums (n=7), Web 2.0 (n=3), virtual community of practice (n=3), wiki (n=1), and Facebook (n=1). A range of health care professionals were sampled in the studies, including physicians (n=24), nurses (n=15), allied health professionals (n=14), followed by health care professionals in general (n=8), a multidisciplinary clinical specialty area (n=9), and midwives (n=2). Of 36 virtual communities, 31 were monodiscipline for a discrete clinical specialty. Population uptake by the target group ranged from 1.6% to 29% (n=4). Evaluation using related theories of “planned behavior” and the “technology acceptance model” (n=3) suggests that social media use is mediated by an individual’s positive attitude toward and accessibility of the media, which is reinforced by credible peers. The most common reason to establish a virtual community was to create a forum where relevant specialty knowledge could be shared and professional issues discussed (n=17). Most members demonstrated low posting behaviors but more frequent reading or accessing behaviors. The most common Web-based activity was request for and supply of specialty-specific clinical information. This knowledge sharing is facilitated by a Web-based culture of collectivism, reciprocity, and a respectful noncompetitive environment. Findings suggest that health care professionals view virtual communities as valuable knowledge portals for sourcing clinically relevant and quality information that enables them to make more informed practice decisions. Conclusions: There is emerging evidence that health care professionals use social media to develop virtual communities to share domain knowledge. These virtual communities, however, currently reflect tribal behaviors of clinicians that may continue to limit knowledge sharing. Further research is required to evaluate the effects of social media on knowledge distribution in clinical practice and importantly whether patient outcomes are significantly improved. [J Med Internet Res 2016;18(6):e166]

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How Health Care Professionals Use Social Media to Create Virtual Communities: An Integrative Review.

The great popularisation of social media at the beginning of the 21st century has led to the production of many empirical studies in an attempt to explore the opportunities these platforms provide for different activities, such as learning and updating for professionals. This study aims to identify and summarise the main characteristics of research into social media and professional development published between 2013 and 2017. We analysed the years, journals, conceptual background, research methodologies, data collection tools, professional disciplines, educational contexts, types of social media and characteristics of social media that can generate learning opportunities. A total of 44 articles were selected and analysed from peer-reviewed journals. Findings revealed that (1) an upward trend with respect to research on social media and professional development; (2) surveys were the main research method for collecting data about social media; (3) health and education sciences are the most studied fields of knowledge; (4) there is a special interest in the study of social media in informal learning contexts; (5) Twitter is the most studied social media platform and (6) social media seems to be a sustainable support for professional development due to its open, social and flexible nature. Implications of findings for future research are also discussed.

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Social media and professional development: a systematic review

Despite the ubiquity of learning in the everyday life of most workplaces, the learning analytics community only has paid attention to such settings very recently. One probable reason for this oversight is the fact that learning in the workplace is often informal, hard to grasp and not univocally defined. This paper summarizes the state of the art of Workplace Learning Analytics (WPLA), extracted from a systematic literature review of five academic databases as well as other known sources in the WPLA community. Our analysis of existing proposals discusses particularly on the role of different conceptions of learning and their influence on the LA proposals’ design and technology choices. We end the paper by discussing opportunities for future work in this emergent field.

Learning Analytics for Professional and Workplace Learning: A Literature Review

Higher educational institutes (HEI) are adopting ubiquitous and smart equipment such as mobile devices or digital gadgets to deliver educational content in a more effective manner than the traditional approaches. In present works, a lot of smart classroom approaches have been developed, however, the student learning experience is not yet fully explored. Moreover, module historical data over time is not considered which could provide insight into the possible outcomes in the future, leading new improvements and working as an early detection method for the future results within the module. This paper proposes a framework by taking into account module historical data in order to predict module performance, particularly the module result before the commencement of classes with the goal of improving module pass percentage. Furthermore, a video streaming server along with blended learning are sequentially integrated with the designed framework to ensure correctness of teaching and learning pedagogy. Simulation results demonstrate that by considering module historical data using time series forecasting helps in improving module performance in terms of module delivery and result outcome in terms of pass percentage. Furthermore, the proposed framework provides a mechanism for faculties to adjust their teaching style according to student performance level to minimize the student failure rate.

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Enhancing the teaching and learning process using video streaming servers and forecasting techniques

Background: Many current challenges of evidence-based practice are related to ineffective social networks among health care professionals. Opportunities exist for multidisciplinary virtual communities to transcend professional and organizational boundaries and facilitate important knowledge transfer. Although health care professionals have been using the Internet to form virtual communities for many years, little is known regarding “why” they join, as most research has focused on the perspective of “posters,” who form a minority of members. Objective: Our aim was to develop a comprehensive understanding of why health care professionals belong to a virtual community (VC). Methods: A qualitative approach will be used to explore why health care professionals belong to an intensive care practice-based VC, established since 2003. Three asynchronous online focus groups will be convened using a closed secure discussion forum. Participants will be recruited directly by sending emails to the VC and a Google form used to collect consent and participant demographics. Participants will be stratified by their online posting behaviors between September 1, 2012, and August 31, 2014: (1) more than 5 posts, (2) 1-5 posts, or (3) no posts. A question guide will be used to guide participant discussion. A moderation approach based on the principles of focus group method and e-moderation has been developed. The main source of data will be discussion threads, supported by a research diary and field notes. Data analysis will be undertaken using a thematic approach and framed by the Diffusion of Innovation theory. NVivo software will be used to support analyses. Results: At the time of writing, 29 participants agreed to participate (Focus Group 1: n=4; Focus Group 2: n=16; Focus Group 3: n=9) and data collection was complete. Conclusions: This study will contribute to a growing body of research on the use of social media in professional health care settings. Specifically, we hope results will demonstrate an enhancement of health care professionals’ social networks and how VCs may improve knowledge distribution and patient care outcomes. Additionally, the study will contribute to research methods development in this area by detailing approaches to understand the effectiveness of online focus groups as a data collection method for qualitative research methods. [JMIR Res Protoc 2016;5(2):e99]

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Why We Belong - Exploring Membership of Healthcare Professionals in an Intensive Care Virtual Community Via Online Focus Groups: Rationale and Protocol

Online social networking (OSN) provides a new way for health professionals to communicate, collaborate and share ideas with each other for informal learning on a massive scale It has important implications for ongoing efforts to support Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the health professions However, the challenge of analysing the data generated in OSNs makes it difficult to understand whether and how they are useful for CPD This paper presents a conceptual model for using mixed methods to study data from OSNs to examine the efficacy of OSN in supporting informal learning of health professionals It is expected that using this model with the dataset generated in OSNs for informal learning will produce new and important insights into how well this innovation in CPD is serving professionals and the healthcare system

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A conceptual model for analysing informal learning in online social networks for health professionals.

Online Social Networking may be a way to support health professionals' need for continuous learning through interaction with peers and experts. Understanding and evaluating such learning is important but difficult, and Social Network Analysis (SNA) offers a solution. This paper demonstrates how SNA can be used to study levels of participation as well as the patterns of interactions that take place among health professionals in a large online professional learning network. Our analysis has shown that their learning network is highly centralised and loosely connected. The level of participation is low in general, and most interactions are structured around a small set of users consisting of moderators and core members. The structural patterns of interaction indicates there is a chance of small group learning occurring and requires further investigation to identify those potential learning groups. This first stage of analysis, to be followed by longitudinal study of the dynamics of interaction and complemented by content analysis of their discussion, may contribute to greater sophistication in the analysis and utilisation of new environments for health professional learning.

Analysing health professionals' learning interactions in online social networks: A social network analysis approach

This paper summarises a longitudinal analysis of learning interactions occurring over three years among health professionals in an online social network. The study employs the techniques of Social Network Analysis (SNA) and statistical modeling to identify the changes in patterns of interaction over time and test associated structural network effects. SNA results indicate overall low participation in the network, although some participants became active over time and even led discussions. In particular, the analysis has shown that a change of lead contributor results in a change in learning interaction and network structure. The analysis of structural network effects demonstrates that the interaction dynamics slow down over time, indicating that interactions in the network are more stable. The health professionals may be reluctant to share knowledge and collaborate in groups but were interested in building personal learning networks or simply seeking information.

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Analysing health professionals' learning interactions in an Online Social Network: a longitudinal study

Online social networks (OSN) enable health professionals to learn informally, for example by sharing medical knowledge, or discussing practice management challenges and clinical issues. Understanding the learning context in OSN is necessary to get a complete picture of the learning process, in order to better support this type of learning. This study proposes critical contextual factors for understanding the learning context in OSN for health professionals, and demonstrates how these contextual factors can be used to analyse the learning context in a designated online learning environment for health professionals.

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Understanding the Context of Learning in an Online Social Network for Health Professionals' Informal Learning.

Online social networks (OSNs) enable health professionals to learn informally, for example by sharing medical knowledge, or discussing practice management challenges and clinical issues. Understanding how learning occurs in OSNs is necessary to better support this type of learning. Through a cross-sectional survey, this study found that learning interaction in OSNs is low in general, with a small number of active users. Some health professionals actively used OSNs to support their practice, including sharing practical and experiential knowledge, benchmarking themselves, and to keep up-to-date on policy, advanced information and news in the field. These health professionals had an overall positive learning experience in OSNs.

https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5963&context=smhpapers

Xin Li

Papers

A conceptual model for analysing informal learning in online social networks for health professionals.

Analysing health professionals' learning interactions in online social networks: A social network analysis approach

Analysing health professionals' learning interactions in an Online Social Network: a longitudinal study

Understanding the Context of Learning in an Online Social Network for Health Professionals' Informal Learning.

Understanding Health Professionals' Informal Learning in Online Social Networks: A Cross-Sectional Survey.