Keywords:
Imaging Informatics, Computer applications, eHealth, Teleradiology, eLearning, Education and training, Prospective, Observational, Not applicable
Authors:
D. G. Castiglione1, S. Salerno1, T. V. Bartolotta1, A. Basile2; 1Palermo/IT, 2Catania/IT
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2020/C-05095
Purpose
Social networks influence how we live, how we work, and now more than ever, how we learn. In fact, we live in the information society, in an era of rapid technological advancements and the digital revolution, where a lot of our daily activities take place in an online world, both in personal and professional life. The role of Social Media Networks is a dominant component.
They encourage a collaborative environment and an open forum that can accelerate the development of creative critical thinking and communication processes. Every day, a huge number of radiologic images are shared on social networks with a didactic purpose. Radiologists may use these tools shaping and presenting information in a way that makes teaching and learning innovative and more engaging than traditional tools do. If used with intention, social networks can positively influence the way each individual learns and absorbs information.
Many radiologists share their daily routine and cases in seeking collaborations and ideas. They create learning content, share articles with comment functionality, give live information about important events and congresses, pose questions to the broader community. This behaviour generates interactions and represents the core of the “social active learning process”. Rather than passively absorbing information, everyone can participle in a culture of learning.
The inherent tendency of social media to educate in small pieces also may have an impact on the type of education it can deliver [1-2]. Because learners are online and often unknown, there is no way to measure their growth in knowledge or their retention of content.
Our purpose was to analyse the nature of the “social active learning process” phenomenon with a focus on the utility in the daily practice of radiology content viewed via different social networks, and on the perceived quality of this kind of learning material by using an online survey worldwide distributed.