A closer look at the process for creating and launching a
social learning website for surgical residency programs.
In January 2009, I attended ASTD TechKnowledge, which emphasizes
developing and managing e-learning. During the conference, I was
introduced to a vast array Web 2.0 concepts and constructs that
were new to me, including Twitter, wikis, social bookmarking tools
such as delicious.com for; social networking sites like LinkedIn
and Ning; and such RSS readers as Google Reader and Bloglines.
I was a stranger in a strange land trying to comprehend a language
that was foreign to me, but before the conference concluded, I
joined Twitter, visited a number of Web 2.0 sites, and began to
formulate how I could leverage the information I learned to improve
communication and collaboration in the general surgery residency
program for the Hospital of Saint Raphael. Initially, I thought it
might be useful to develop a wiki as a way to post notes from
administrative meetings with residents and to pose clinical case
scenarios to which residents could collaborate, respond, and
comment. In addition, we could also use the wiki as a vehicle to
solicit ongoing input for research topics and ideas.
However, I soon felt myself broadening the original scope beyond
the boundaries of a single residency program and began focusing on
the idea of how to use social media tools to potentially affect all
general surgery residency programs. I decided to leverage the
interactive features found in social networking sites to develop a
website for the purpose of enhancing communication, collaboration,
and the exchange of ideas among all general surgery programs. The
goal was to create a nexus where program directors, coordinators,
and staff could go and take advantage their collective wisdom to
improve resident training and residency programs.
Understanding the basics
The interactivity that makes social networking sites like Facebook,
MySpace, Youtube, and Flickr appealing is driven by technologies
known as Web 2.0. According to Wikipedia, Darcy DiNucci coined the
term Web 2.0 in her 1999 article "Fragmented Future." DiNucci
writes, "The Web will be understood not as screenfuls of text and
graphics but as a transport mechanism, the ether through which
interactivity happens."
With Web 1.0, users browsed static content such as articles and
newspapers, exchanged emails, and sold and bought goods and
services. Although there was basic interaction, the goal was to
deliver information rather than bring together people with like
interests to share common experiences. Web 2.0, which describes the
current stage of the Internet, uses many of the same technologies
as the Internet's earlier phase, but it also offers additional
layers to create interactivity and engagement, as well as increases
the dynamic interfaces on web pages so users can actively
contribute information to create content.
What does this mean? Users can easily share ideas, contribute
information, and communicate with each other, thereby enabling more
meaningful interactions. While Web 1.0 was passive, with
participants basically able to view information that was provided
to them, Web 2.0 is active.
Although social networking sites are frequently used as places to
develop personal relationships, they also can be leveraged to share
and learn new information. Consider Wikipedia, which uses a Web 2.0
platform to deliver content created by its users and encourages
participants to contribute value to the site by adding or updating
existing entries.
Social learning meets surgical setting
As a surgical educator, my experience has been that residency
programs tend to operate in silos and collectively behave more in
line with Web 1.0 concepts. There seems to be limited
cross-pollination of ideas even though programs in the same
sub-specialty have similar goals and interests.
Exceptions do occur. For instance, during regional and annual
meetings, program directors, coordinators, and staff renew old
acquaintances, share problems and issues with colleagues, listen to
research presentations, and participate in workshops. As beneficial
as these meetings are, many viable concepts and ideas die at the
exit door or invariably get buried or forgotten when faculty and
staff return to the reality of the day-to-day tactical challenges
of managing or participating in the running of a residency
program.
Enter Web 2.0. As a developer of the residency training program at
The Hospital of Saint Raphael, I wanted to be able to learn about
and take advantage of best practices at other residency programs.
As a result, I decided to create a social media site where medical
educational professionals could go to leverage the collective
wisdom of colleagues 24/7/365 - a place to share ideas, techniques,
strategies, tips, forms, and so forth that spawn throughout the
year, as well as a means to continue dialog about issues generated
at a recent meeting.
The next step was to determine how to operationalize the vision of
creating a social learning network for residency programs. With
limited web programming and design experience, the prospect of
developing one from scratch did not seem practical. Fortunately,
due to the popularity of social networking, sites offering Web 2.0
templates have sprung up - and many are free. As the popularity of
social networking grows, more free Web 2.0 templates are sure to
follow.
After much investigation and testing, we decided to use the Ning
platform. Ning is a popular web-building and hosting tool that
currently has approximately 2 million networks created on the
platform, with a total of 40 million users. Site creation was free,
templates were appealing and easy-to-use, technical support was
extremely responsive, and the site was highly customizable. While
Facebook and Myspace seems geared more toward connecting people to
friends and family, Ning gathers users around more common
interests.
A test site was launched to garner feedback from colleagues and
potential users. Improvements were made and The Graduate Medical
Education Learning Network (www.graduatemedicaleducation.ning.com)
was officially launched regionally. The site is described as "an
educational community for faculty, program directors, and
coordinators to improve surgical residency programs and resident
education." Major areas of the site are organized using tabs to
delineate content. For example, the Forum tab is for members to
share practical information about teaching and learning. Members
can upload to the forum any strategies or techniques they have used
or know to be particularly effective. Additional features include a
calendar for listing events, a Blog tab, a Resource tab for useful
references, RSS feeds from two medical publications, and a chat
option. Also, members have their own profile pages that they can
easily customize.
Lessons learned
The site continues to be a work in process, and members may
encounter some struggles - which most new sites experience. There
are barriers to success of any social networking site, including
culture-based resistance to adoption and participation, as well as
a tendency for some to practice knowledge-hoarding rather than
knowledge-sharing.
Also, currently there is limited use of the site. At the time of
launch, it was too late to schedule a presentation at the annual
program directors' meeting. More recently, I used our program
directors' list serve to solicit feedback. This strategy has
provided useful information and additional members. Emails to
coordinators in the New England area have garnered constructive
responses and new members.
In order to overcome barriers and expand membership, the next step
is to deliver a presentation about the site at the upcoming annual
spring meeting of program directors and coordinators - its primary
target audience. This should provide useful feedback about the
design and content of the site, as well as address concerns faculty
and staff have about using a social networking site in the
workplace. More important, it will get the word out and hopefully
grow members.
The changing workplace is starting to acknowledge and address that
younger employees embed social networks in their daily tasks
because they use such virtual tools to stay connected with their
peers personally. This virtual connection gives them instant access
to answers they need on personal level, so it follows suit that
they will use the same tools for business-related issues -
retrieving information, sharing best practices, and collaborating
on projects. Consider the example Google has set as an early
adopter of social networking concepts: To capture employee
intellectual capabilities and creativity, all of its employees have
had the opportunity to blog and contribute to the company's wiki
since 2006.
To be sure, social learning network sites will eventually become
part of the fabric of the workplace. Although The Graduate Medical
Education Learning Network has not reached its full potential, I am
convinced the concept is viable. Like most Web 2.0 initiatives, the
site is evolving. We continue to evaluate whether we have all the
features and tools residency programs want or need.
Jack Contessa is a surgical educator at Hospital
of Saint Raphael; jcontessa@srhs.org.