The emerging Web 2.0 social software: an enabling suite of sociable technologies in health and health care education¹

Abstract

Web 2.0 sociable technologies and social software are presented as enablers in health and health care, for organizations, clinicians, patients and laypersons. They include social networking services, collaborative filtering, social bookmarking, folksonomies, social search engines, file sharing and tagging, mashups, instant messaging, and online multi-player games. The more popular Web 2.0 applications in education, namely wikis, blogs and podcasts, are but the tip of the social software iceberg. Web 2.0 technologies represent a quite revolutionary way of managing and repurposing/remixing online information and knowledge repositories, including clinical and research information, in comparison with the traditional Web 1.0 model. The paper also offers a glimpse of future software, touching on Web 3.0 (the Semantic Web) and how it could be combined with Web 2.0 to produce the ultimate architecture of participation. Although the tools presented in this review look very promising and potentially fit for purpose in many health care applications and scenarios, careful thinking, testing and evaluation research are still needed in order to establish 'best practice models' for leveraging these emerging technologies to boost our teaching and learning productivity, foster stronger 'communities of practice', and support continuing medical education/professional development (CME/CPD) and patient education.

Learning Analytics for Online Discussions: Embedded and Extracted Approaches

“…In this work, online discussions are conceptualized from a social constructivist perspective as a venue in which learners can interact to build both collective and individual understanding through dialogue (Kamel Boulos & Wheeler, 2007;Stahl, 2005). Scholars differ in their theoretical accounts of the mechanisms underlying the learning process, referring variously to the importance of being exposed to multiple viewpoints, articulating one's own ideas, experiencing socio-cognitive conflict, and the negotiation and internalization of group understandings (Lipponen, 2002;Stahl, 2005;Wise, Speer et al, 2013).…”

The development of the reflective practitioner through digital storytelling

“…At the same time, the ability to create and share information digitally has become increasingly central to professional roles (Albion, 2008;Kamel Boulos and Wheeler, 2007). Through the construction of a multimodal artefact (Jamissen and Skou, 2010) with its combination of images, words and music, students can convey an emotional depth rarely encountered in the more traditional forms of reflective essay or portfolio.…”

“…Teachers and health and social care practitioners can be said to require specific skill sets in regard to digital competence (Albion, 2008;Kamel Boulos and Wheeler, 2007). In the case of teachers, they need to be digitally competent to support both the teaching and learning of ICT from the first stages in education in primary education as well as their own professional development (Castañeda and Adell, 2011).…”

“…With the emergence of Web 2.0, the ability to create and share information digitally has become increasingly central to professional roles (Albion, 2008;Kamel Boulos and Wheeler, 2007). The digital story is a prime example of user-created, repurposed content, in which open educational resources (OER) are exploited to create digital and multimodal stories (Copeland, 2012;Jamissen and Skou, 2010).…”

A mashup based framework for multi level healthcare interoperability

“…In other words, patients must be empowered to build their needs into any technology on offer (Kamel Boulos & Wheeler 2007).…”