Web-based Learning Community Research Articles

CONNECTING THE HEALTH CARE WORKFORCE THROUGH A VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITY

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for online and virtual educational opportunities and resources. While many healthcare organizations, hospitals and academic medical institutions were forced to quickly pivot from face-to-face training modalities, the Virtual Learning Community (VLC) of the Geriatric Scholars Program, was ahead of the curve. Established in 2014 by the VA Geriatric Scholars Program and the VHA’s Office of Rural Health, the VLC is the primary outlet for information on geriatrics and gerontology for healthcare professionals and staff. The VLC provides webinars, discussion forums, case studies, continuing education accredited programs, and resource materials on a myriad of topics related to aging. During the pandemic, the VLC provided up-to-date information on COVID and continued to augment its virtual offerings, which was vital to providers and staff working remotely. The VLC currently has approximately 5,000 registered users, with 1700 users registering since the pandemic began in March 2020. Many of these users come from rural and highly rural areas, where there is often a lack of geriatric knowledge and expertise. The presentation will present findings about the connections and impact made possible by a pre-existing web-based virtual learning community.

Facilitation of a multisite student topic discussion series using web-based conferencing technology

IntroductionWhile technology's use and impact in the classroom setting is well-documented in literature, use during experiential education is less defined. Our objectives were to assess the change in clinical knowledge and application skills following a multisite topic discussion (TD) series using web-based conferencing technology during ambulatory care advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPEs) and to assess student perceptions of learning through use of this modality. MethodsA multisite TD series was created using web-based conferencing technology for students assigned to a clinical faculty member's ambulatory care APPE. Five topic discussions were conducted during each five-week rotation block covering disease states integral to ambulatory care practice. Pre- and post-assessments were administered to assess student learning and a survey was administered to assess student perceptions of learning. ResultsA total of 151 students were invited to participate in the study with 114 (75.5%) included in the final analysis. Overall student performance improved significantly from 53.3 ± 12.7% on the pre-assessment to 65.8 ± 14.3% on the post-assessment, with student performance on the post-assessment improving significantly in all topic areas. Students perceived that the TD series enhanced their learning and ability to apply clinical information while creating an online learning community. ConclusionsThe addition of a multisite TD series using web-based conferencing technology successfully enhanced student knowledge. Student perceptions of this new web-based learning community were positive overall, despite some technological limitations. The results of this study support the use of web-based conferencing technology to enhance student learning during APPEs.

A Case Study of the Instruction Method of Pre-service English Teachers’ Teaching Practicum: Using a Web-based Learning Community

A Case Study of the Instruction Method of Pre-service English Teachers’ Teaching Practicum: Using a Web-based Learning Community

Enterprise Microblogging to Augment the Subinternship Clinical Learning Experience: A Proof-of-Concept Quality Improvement Study.

BackgroundAlthough the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine (CDIM) has created a core subinternship curriculum, the traditional experiential subinternship may not expose students to all topics. Furthermore, academic institutions often use multiple clinical training sites for the student clerkship experience.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to sustain a Web-based learning community across geographically disparate sites via enterprise microblogging to increase subintern exposure to the CDIM curriculum.MethodsInternal medicine subinterns used Yammer, a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)–secure enterprise microblogging platform, to post questions, images, and index conversations for searching. The subinterns were asked to submit 4 posts and participate in 4 discussions during their rotation. Faculty reinforced key points, answered questions, and monitored HIPAA compliance.ResultsIn total, 56 medical students rotated on an internal medicine subinternship from July 2014 to June 2016. Of them, 84% returned the postrotation survey. Over the first 3 months, 100% of CDIM curriculum topics were covered. Compared with the pilot year, the scale-up year demonstrated a significant increase in the number of students with >10 posts (scale-up year 49% vs pilot year 19%; P=.03) and perceived educational experience (58% scale-up year vs 14% pilot year; P=.006). Few students (6%) noted privacy concerns, but fewer students in the scale-up year found Yammer to be a safe learning environment.ConclusionsSupplementing the subinternship clinical experience with an enterprise microblogging platform increased subinternship exposure to required curricular topics and was well received. Future work should address concerns about safe learning environment.

Abstract 120: Organizational Culture Change to Reduce 30-day Mortality in Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction: A Mixed Methods Study

Background: Improving outcomes for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is a priority for hospitals, clinicians, and policymakers. Evidence suggests hospital organizational culture is linked to patient outcomes; however, few studies have attempted to change organizational culture in order to improve patient outcomes, and none have addressed mortality for patients with AMI. We seek to address these gaps through a novel longitudinal intervention study, Leadership Saves Lives (LSL). We hypothesize that we will observe: 1) positive shifts in key dimensions of hospital organizational culture associated with lower mortality rates for patients with AMI; 2) increased use of targeted evidence-based practices associated with lower mortality rates for patients with AMI; and 3) reduced in-hospital AMI mortality. Methodology and Results: We describe the methodology of LSL, a 3-year intervention study using a concurrent mixed methods design, guided by open systems theory and the AIDED model of diffusion, implemented in a national sample of 10 diverse U.S. hospitals and hospitals in their peer networks. Intervention hospital teams participate in: 1) annual convenings of the 10 hospitals; 2) semiannual workshops at each intervention hospital; and 3) a web-based learning community that includes a discussion board and a repository for resources and tools. We describe features of program design that allow us to promote and measure intervention fidelity, while also allowing for tailoring of the intervention to the unique local context in each hospital. We quantify changes in hospital practices, culture, and mortality through annual surveys of both intervention hospitals in their peer networks. In-person, in-depth interviews and selective observations of key interactions in care for patients with AMI allow us to describe the change process. The intervention began with an annual meting of the 10 intervention hospitals in June 2014. The first wave of survey data collection, hospital-specific workshops and qualitative data collection were completed between September and November 2014. Conclusions: LSL is novel in its use of a prospective longitudinal mixed methods approach in a diverse sample of hospitals, its focus on objective outcome measures of mortality, its attention to maintaining fidelity of the intervention across diverse hospital settings, and its examination of changes not only in the intervention hospitals but also in their peer hospital networks over time. This study adds to the methodological literature for the study of complex interventions to promote hospital organizational culture change, with direct impact on patients with AMI.

Social Media for Informal Minority Language Learning: Exploring Welsh Learners’ Practices

Conole and Alevizou’s social media typology (Conole and Alevizou, 2010) includes amongst its ten categories: media sharing; conversational arenas and chat; social networking and blogging. These are all media with which language learners are increasingly engaging (Lamy and Zourou, 2013). Social networking tools, in particular, which encourage informal, social communication have been identified as suitable for supporting language learning and their use is growing quickly. This paper reviews research on using social media for informal language learning. It will then discuss a small qualitative case study of Welsh learners’ practices in using such resources. Welsh is a minority UK language spoken by around a fifth of the population of Wales. Unlike a majority language there is no need for English speakers in Wales to learn Welsh in order to communicate with Welsh speakers as all UK Welsh speakers are bilingual. Nevertheless there is great interest among adults in Wales and from Welsh families across the UK in learning Welsh. However there are two particular challenges: the small numbers of speakers (around 611,000), and their very uneven distribution. These two factors make it difficult for learners outside Welsh speaking “hotspots” to hear and practice Welsh. Social media has the potential to support Welsh language learning by providing resources wherever the learner is (particularly if they live in a non-Welsh speaking area or outside Wales completely) and by supporting web-based learning communities. The study reported here is concerned with the extent to which this potential is being exploited in practice. It employed interviews and a small survey to study the practices of learners at all stages of their language learning. It was found that learners used social media widely but those at different stages used social media somewhat differently, with beginners browsing to make contacts and gather information, listening to the language and watching Welsh programmes via the internet whilst some advanced learners set up practice groups, lead sub-communities and source and provide resources both on- and off-line.

Exposing Clinicians to Exposure: A Randomized Controlled Dissemination Trial of Exposure Therapy for Anxiety Disorders

ObjectiveThe present study evaluated three technology-based methods of training mental health providers in exposure therapy (ET) for anxiety disorders. Training methods were designed to address common barriers to the dissemination of ET, including limited access to training, negative clinician attitudes toward ET, and lack of support during and following training. MethodClinicians naïve to ET (N=181, Mage=37.4, 71.3% female, 72.1% Caucasian) were randomly assigned to (a) an interactive, multimedia online training (OLT), (b) OLT plus a brief, computerized motivational enhancement intervention (OLT+ME), or (c) OLT+ME plus a Web-based learning community (OLT+ME+LC). Assessments were completed at baseline, posttraining, and 6 and 12weeks following training. Outcomes include satisfaction, knowledge, self-efficacy, attitudes, self-reported clinical use, and observer-rated clinical proficiency. ResultsAll three training methods led to large and comparable improvements in self-efficacy and clinical use of ET, indicating that OLT alone was sufficient for improving these outcomes. The addition of the ME intervention did not significantly improve outcomes in comparison to OLT alone. Supplementing the OLT with both the ME intervention and the LC significantly improved attitudes and clinical proficiency in comparison to OLT alone. The OLT+ME+LC condition was superior to both other conditions in increasing knowledge of ET. ConclusionsMulticomponent trainings that address multiple potential barriers to dissemination appear to be most effective in improving clinician outcomes. Technology-based training methods offer a satisfactory, effective, and scalable way to train mental health providers in evidence-based treatments such as ET.

A Schematic Description of the Nature of Video-Conferencing and Internet Exchange

The world is becoming increasingly one multicultural Global village and business and education transnational, which implies that students will need to recognize accept and adjust to cultural differences in communications to succeed in their studies as well as in their future careers. This presentation is fundamentally about a niftier way of intercultural learning and knowledge-acquisition that adapts video-conferencing and Internet technology to build Web-based successful learning communities. Students can meet on interactive camera at least twice per week and thereafter at any time using Google-mail during the semester effectively forming a knowledge community. The learning community can collaborate to develop the capacity to create diffuse and distribute experiential knowledge in boundary-less and Global-campuses in virtual environments. Students from different universities will cohere to understand each other's culture without leaving their own countries. The method is cost-effective as compared to similar costly semester abroad and hiked out-of-state tuition rates. Students can access additional resources to enhance cultural competencies from the virtual libraries and faculty facilitating in the program without leaving their campuses.

Supporting Professional Development in Special Education with Web-Based Professional Learning Communities: New Possibilities with Web 2.0

This article describes the challenges in organizing professional learning communities (PLCs) in special education, identifies the teacher and student benefits of using a PLC approach to professional development, and discusses the promise and pitfalls of organizing web-based PLCs to engage distributed stakeholders in the practice of special education. The author used two Web 2.0 applications, a wiki and a Ning, to provide the infrastructure and support community-building efforts. Although the PLC membership has grown to about 200 members during the past four years, data collected via Web 2.0 show that most of the members participate as observers only, relying almost entirely on the network administrator to direct and manage all facets of community work. The development of web-based PLCs to support the practice of special education may be dependent upon the building of school-based leadership in addition to the meaningful participation of school administrators and teacher educators in community work.

Confronting Myths about Teacher Leadership

Leadership in Freshman Physics is an NSF-funded professional development program designed to support 9 th grade teacher leaders in the successful implementation of a ‘Physics First’ or curriculum sequence that places physics prior to biology and chemistry. Leadership is viewed as an essential component in the initial success and long-term sustainability of such reforms. However, our own experiences working with teachers and the growing body of literature cautions that teachers may not view themselves as leaders and may hold ideas counterproductive to their development as leaders. In this article, we consider teachers’ myths about leadership, and describe how we helped teachers confront these in a professional development program. In this program, each teacher designed a plan of action, based on his or her professional experiences and school environment. A web-based online learning community was established to serve as a platform of interaction and support among teachers and project staff throughout the year. We emphasize that by developing their capacity for leadership, teachers can make a difference beyond their own classrooms through empowering others.

Structuring Professional Development with an Online Community

As part of a multiyear research study on the preparation of educators to use assessment data for instructional improvement, the present study is a pilot test of a research-based professional development intervention for career-technical teachers. Forty-eight educators at nine sites in five states participated in a 1-day workshop followed by several months of mentoring either on site, by teleconference, or website. To extend the professional learning of the workshop, educators were mentored for several months as they developed a plan for instructional improvement. To complement the mentoring, a project-specific website was the focus of a community of practice where the participants could exchange information and create threaded discussions about the process of data-driven instructional improvement. Educators need an orientation to the website features, reinforcement for their online interactions, and specific activities to complete in a timeframe if they are to use web-based professional learning communities to the fullest.

Repensar a função docente e desenvolver práticas colaborativas na escola: Contribuiçoes da internet

This article presents an e-learning experience in which a Web based learning community has been developed to gather several teacher educators of the course N...

Designing, managing and assessing a Web 2.0 learning community to enhance inquiry based learning

This paper develops understanding of how to design, manage and assess learning environments in which traditional and Web 2.0 technologies are integrated to improve the overall learning experience. To provide preliminary evidence, we designed an integrated model of a web based learning community (WBLC), comprising the following components: learning actors (learners, stakeholders, mentors, tutors, staff); learning processes (abstract conceptualisation, active experimentation, reflective observation and concrete experience); learning modes (inquiry based learning) and learning tools (wiki, blog, folksonomies) together with a learning dashboard (social network analysis, knowledge creation, learning satisfaction, IT adoption). The application of the model to the community of an international Master's programme provided evidence of the potential benefits of the model. Preliminary results suggest that Web 2.0 technologies in education have great potential in supporting the acquisition of learner competencies and skills. However, they also require significant effort from students and mentors in changing their attitude towards new ways of interacting.

Self-supportive virtual communities

Web-based learning communities allow individuals to improve their skills and knowledge, while offering global distribution of participants and asynchronous participation. Although flexible and distributed, the learning process in such communities is still unidirectional from professors to students. In virtual communities that relate to healthcare, learning and personal improvement is a collaborative process and actions are patient-centric. This work introduces the notion of 'self-supportive virtual communities' – which combine the merits of 'communities of practice' and 'learning communities' and capitalise on the virtual community infrastructures in order to support collaboration of all healthcare participants (i.e., care providers, caregivers and care consumers). This paper discusses the dimensions of the self-supportive community, illustrates the main issues for the transition to the new type of community and summarises the development process of the community. It also gives an example of a self-supportive community for the deaf and the hearing.

Teaching Dimension in Web-Based Learning Communities

The article tackles the issue of the teaching dimension in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) contexts. In particular, it describes two Web-based courses that were held in 2006—one by the Istituto Tecnologie Didattiche – CNR and one by the University of Genoa, which, while sharing the socioconstructivist theoretical framework, adopt different approaches as far as the teaching dimension is concerned: While in the former course tutors were asked to cover all the functions typically required by e-tutors, in the latter, experience functions were distributed across a variety of actors. The aim of the work is to foster reflections about strong points and weaknesses of the two approaches, thus leading to considerations concerning the applicability of the models even in contexts different from the original ones.

Exploiting Virtual Environments to Support Collaborative E-Learning Communities

The main goal of this article is to facilitate educational designers and developers by providing a point of reference for making decisions on how to incorporate 3D environments into the applications they develop as well as for extending their capabilities by integrating more functionality. Therefore, this article presents the design principles for virtual spaces, which aim at supporting multi-user communication in Web-based learning communities. In addition the implementation of these principles is presented, using as point of reference EVE Training Area. This environment constitutes a three-dimensional space where participants, represented by 3D humanoid avatars, have the ability to use a variety of 3D e-collaboration tools for learning together. Furthermore, this article presents collaborative e-learning usage scenarios that could be realized by exploiting collaborative virtual environments.

Online and distance learning: concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications

Web-enabled communication technologies are at the forefront of rapid change in education from the K-12 level through postgraduate education. The ascendancy of online learning environments has opened an array of opportunities and challenges, and has raised a formidable set of implications in the pedagogical, economic, political, and other realms that we have only begun to grasp, let alone fully manage. Online and Distance Learning: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications provides a comprehensive collection of case studies, empirical research, conceptual demonstrations, and best practices on Web-enabled learning technologies. This comprehensive, six-volume collection addresses all prominent aspects of online and distance learning, including information communication technologies applied to education, virtual classrooms, pedagogical systems, Web-based learning communities, library information systems, virtual universities, and numerous other topics. Collecting defining research in over 300 chapters from some 800 contributors representing more than 100 countries, Online and Distance Learning: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications enables libraries to provide a foundational reference to meet the information needs of researchers, educators, practitioners, administrators, and all other stakeholders in the online and distance learning context.

Enhancing educational portals through capturing collective knowledge of web-based learning communities

Since the early stages of the World Wide Web, web-based learning communities have been constantly developed online. Among the primary objectives of their members has been to share digital learning resources and increase the community's collective knowledge by communicating and collaborating online. In this paper, we discuss how the learning object paradigm can be exploited to support web-based learning communities and online communities of practice, as a means to enhance the services already provided by Educational Portals (EP). It is claimed that this can be achieved by motivating the active interaction of community members with the EPs' resources and at the same time allowing the dynamic update of the available resources taking into account the community's collective knowledge on the real use of the resources. To this end, we present the ASK e-Educational Communities Environment (ASK e-EDCOM), a web-based environment for the empowerment of online educational communities.

Developing wikis to foster web-based learning communities: an iterative approach

This paper discusses ongoing research at Deakin University, which focuses on developing wikis to foster web-based learning communities. Research to date has used wikis to facilitate collaborative icebreaker exercises, discussions, and to create knowledge repositories. Student feedback has contributed to the iterative revision of the wiki interface, the icebreaker exercise and the development of new tasks for students to complete using the wiki. The analysis and discussion of the experiments presented in this paper focuses on usage trends such as the signature, viewing and editing patterns exhibited by the student cohort. The community building potential of wikis is discussed, highlighting the specific wiki features that can be used to foster a sense of community in a web-based learning environment. Finally, issues surrounding the development of web-based learning communities, which have emerged through the wiki study, are discussed and future directions are outlined.

Supporting open-ended discourse with transparent groupware

Web-based learning communities need tools that provide specific support to their progressive and open-ended efforts. The paper starts with an overview of some fundamental principles and phenomena underlying the activities of learning communities, and suggests openness and transparency as two crucial requirements for effective tools. In particular, learning communities should be enabled to utilise any available information sources effectively and engage in artifact-centred discourse. We introduce a system called OurWeb, describing both its current features and a number of ideas for improvement. We also report our experiences from a university course, where a group of computer science students worked like an expert community using OurWeb.