Taking Constructivism One Step Further: Post Hoc Analysis of a Student-Created Wiki

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Abstract

Background

Wiki platform use has potential to improve student learning by improving engagement with course material. A student-created wiki was established to serve as a repository of study tools for students in a medical school curriculum. There is a scarcity of information describing student-led creation of wikis in medical education.

Objective

The aim is to characterize website traffic of a student-created wiki and evaluate student perceptions of usage via a short anonymous online survey.

Methods

Website analytics were used to track visitation statistics to the wiki and a survey was distributed to assess ease of use, interest in contributing to the wiki, and suggestions for improvement.

Results

Site traffic data indicated high usage, with a mean of 315 (SD 241) pageviews per day from July 2011 to March 2013 and 74,317 total user sessions. The mean session duration was 1.94 (SD 1.39) minutes. Comparing Fall 2011 to Fall 2012 sessions revealed a large increase in returning visitors (from 12,397 to 20,544, 65.7%) and sessions via mobile devices (831 to 1560, 87.7%). The survey received 164 responses; 88.0% (162/184) were aware of the wiki at the time of the survey. On average, respondents felt that the wiki was more useful in the preclinical years (mean 2.73, SD 1.25) than in the clinical years (mean 1.88, SD 1.12; P<.001). Perceived usefulness correlated with the percent of studying for which the respondent used electronic resources (Spearman ρ=.414, P<.001).

Conclusions

Overall, the wiki was a highly utilized, although informal, part of the curriculum with much room for improvement and future exploration.

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Most cited references 18

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Wikis, blogs and podcasts: a new generation of Web-based tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education

Maged N Kamel Boulos, Inocencio Maramba, Steve Wheeler (2006)

Background We have witnessed a rapid increase in the use of Web-based 'collaborationware' in recent years. These Web 2.0 applications, particularly wikis, blogs and podcasts, have been increasingly adopted by many online health-related professional and educational services. Because of their ease of use and rapidity of deployment, they offer the opportunity for powerful information sharing and ease of collaboration. Wikis are Web sites that can be edited by anyone who has access to them. The word 'blog' is a contraction of 'Web Log' – an online Web journal that can offer a resource rich multimedia environment. Podcasts are repositories of audio and video materials that can be "pushed" to subscribers, even without user intervention. These audio and video files can be downloaded to portable media players that can be taken anywhere, providing the potential for "anytime, anywhere" learning experiences (mobile learning). Discussion Wikis, blogs and podcasts are all relatively easy to use, which partly accounts for their proliferation. The fact that there are many free and Open Source versions of these tools may also be responsible for their explosive growth. Thus it would be relatively easy to implement any or all within a Health Professions' Educational Environment. Paradoxically, some of their disadvantages also relate to their openness and ease of use. With virtually anybody able to alter, edit or otherwise contribute to the collaborative Web pages, it can be problematic to gauge the reliability and accuracy of such resources. While arguably, the very process of collaboration leads to a Darwinian type 'survival of the fittest' content within a Web page, the veracity of these resources can be assured through careful monitoring, moderation, and operation of the collaborationware in a closed and secure digital environment. Empirical research is still needed to build our pedagogic evidence base about the different aspects of these tools in the context of medical/health education. Summary and conclusion If effectively deployed, wikis, blogs and podcasts could offer a way to enhance students', clinicians' and patients' learning experiences, and deepen levels of learners' engagement and collaboration within digital learning environments. Therefore, research should be conducted to determine the best ways to integrate these tools into existing e-Learning programmes for students, health professionals and patients, taking into account the different, but also overlapping, needs of these three audience classes and the opportunities of virtual collaboration between them. Of particular importance is research into novel integrative applications, to serve as the "glue" to bind the different forms of Web-based collaborationware synergistically in order to provide a coherent wholesome learning experience.

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Junior physician's use of Web 2.0 for information seeking and medical education: a qualitative study.

Benjamin Richard Hughes, Indra Joshi, Hugh Lemonde … (2009)

Web 2.0 internet tools and methods have attracted considerable attention as a means to improve health care delivery. Despite evidence demonstrating their use by medical professionals, there is no detailed research describing how Web 2.0 influences physicians' daily clinical practice. Hence this study examines Web 2.0 use by 35 junior physicians in clinical settings to further understand their impact on medical practice. Diaries and interviews encompassing 177 days of internet use or 444 search incidents, analyzed via thematic analysis. Results indicate that 53% of internet visits employed user-generated or Web 2.0 content, with Google and Wikipedia used by 80% and 70% of physicians, respectively. Despite awareness of information credibility risks with Web 2.0 content, it has a role in information seeking for both clinical decisions and medical education. This is enabled by the ability to cross check information and the diverse needs for background and non-verified information. Web 2.0 use represents a profound departure from previous learning and decision processes which were normally controlled by senior medical staff or medical schools. There is widespread concern with the risk of poor quality information with Web 2.0 use, and the manner in which physicians are using it suggest effective use derives from the mitigating actions by the individual physician. Three alternative policy options are identified to manage this risk and improve efficiency in Web 2.0's use.

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The good, the bad and the wiki: Evaluating student-generated content for collaborative learning

Steve Wheeler, Peter Yeomans, Dawn Wheeler (2008)

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Author and article information

Contributors

Michael Pascoe:

Physical Therapy ProgramSchool of MedicineUniversity of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus13121 E 17th AvenueMailstop C244Aurora, CO, 80045United States1 303 724 5978mike.pascoe@ucdenver.edu

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0281-8167

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): JMIR Med Educ

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): JMIR Med Educ

Journal ID (publisher-id): JME

Title: JMIR Medical Education

Publisher: JMIR Publications (Toronto, Canada )

ISSN (Electronic): 2369-3762

Publication date Collection: Jan-Jun 2018

Publication date (Electronic): 14 June 2018

Volume: 4

Issue: 1

Electronic Location Identifier: e16

Affiliations

[1] ¹ Physical Therapy Program School of Medicine University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Aurora, CO United States

[2] ² Modern Human Anatomy Program Department of Cell and Development Biology University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Aurora, CO United States

[3] ³ Department of Anesthesiology School of Medicine University of Kansas Medical Center Kansas City, CO United States

[4] ⁴ School of Medicine University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Aurora, CO United States

Author notes

Corresponding Author: Michael Pascoe mike.pascoe@ 123456ucdenver.edu

Author information

Michael Pascoe http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0281-8167

Forrest Monroe http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4441-8885

Helen Macfarlane http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7217-1018

Article

Publisher ID: v4i1e16

DOI: 10.2196/mededu.9197

PMC ID: 6024102

PubMed ID: 29903697

SO-VID: b5140245-7e1d-4af3-b18f-2cb6ddd55dab

License:

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Medical Education, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mededu.jmir.org/.as well as this copyright and license information must be included.

History

Date received : 16 October 2017

Date revision requested : 7 December 2017

Date revision received : 30 January 2018

Date accepted : 10 March 2018

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