Personal learning networks: People, not search engines.

Laura Gogia, MD

@googleguacamole • www.lauragogia.com

Academic Learning Transformation Lab • Virginia Commonwealth University

October, 2015

Digitally Enhanced World

Teaching & Learning

Medicine

Digitally Enhanced World

Teaching & Learning

Medicine

What is Social Media?

Social MediaWebsites and applications that enable us to create

and share content or to participate in social networking

Create Share Participate

have a voice, contribute to, and learn about our places in the world.

Social media provides us with the potential to

What is a Personal Learning Network?

What is a Personal Learning Network?Pedagogy

Sociology

Technology

Self-designed, self-initiated systems meant to support life-long learning through the development of digital learning communities

A platform for having voice and being significant in a global, multi-way conversation.

A savvy use of a combination of search engines, websites, self-publishing, and social networking sites to support information gathering and dissemination.

A personal learning network is an approach to (or a philosophy for)

using social media.

How do we think about them?

How do PLNs work?

Why do we (teachers, students, doctors, adults humans) need PLNs?

How do we build and maintain enriching, useful and timesaving PLNs?

***Take-Home Points Slide***1. PLNs are about creating, nurturing, and being in relationships with interested and interesting people.

2. These relationships require investments but have some uniquely digital rewards related to overcoming barriers of space, time, & power hierarchies.

3. Like most personal relationships, the key to in being successful is balancing giving, taking, and collaborating.

4. The best way to fit a PLN into a busy schedule to make your contribution to the network align with your regular work flow.

A former medical professional

An educational researcher

An adult human

Why was I invited to speak to your class?

Me

I was hired to work a hospital-based solo practice. I had no one to cover call. The hospital and its staff were unfamiliar with gynecologic surgery. I was the only female surgeon on staff. I was the youngest physician on staff by over a decade. I was also a new mother. The closest gynecologist was forty miles away in an unaffiliated hospital. My colleagues from residency were a time zone away.

After completing a high volume inner-city obstetrics-gynecology residency, I set out to fulfill financial commitments to the state of Virginia by practicing gynecology in a rural, under-resourced community.

I had a lot of questions.

Motherhood

Working Motherhood

Work-Life Balance

Practice Questions(General)

Practice Questions(GYN-specific)

Patient-specific Questions

Ethical Questions

Gender-specific

LGBQT

Racial Tension

Class inequality

Hospital Culture

Insurance & Political & Legal

YOUNG DR. GOGIA’S QUESTIONS

Undocumented Migrant Workers

Extreme Gerontology

End-of-life care

Human Resources

Rural Lifestyle

Sexual Harassment & Gender Bias

Inter-racial/inter-cultural childrearing

What surgical innovation took gynecology by storm in the mid/late-2000s?

Furthermore...

A. Laparoscopic Hysterectomies

Given my context, why is this a problem?

Most of my questions would have been better answered in the presence of mentors and peers.

Geography, gender, hospital affiliation, time constraints, familial obligations, culture, and other circumstances hindered my ability to find an appropriate peer group.

Professional development – particularly in building surgical skills – was hampered by isolation. The inability to do the newest surgical procedures significantly challenged my professional identity.

Over time, I came to feel like I had no voice, limited opportunities to grow as a physician, or contribute to society. I became disengaged from my patients as well as the practice of medicine.

To Sum Up…

So I quit.

As a graduate student in education, I moved through sub-disciplines and fields until I found one that I felt had room for me to have a voice and make a real contribution.

I found it in open education, connected learning, and digital scholarship, because these fields require practitioners to develop personal learning networks.

Personal learning networks allow for sustainable, flexible, and various forms of lifelong learning and contribution.

Three ways to think about apersonal learning network.

People & Topics Digital Platforms Workflow

My (current) Twitter network

People & Topics in my Twitter Network

Digital Scholarship

Networked Learning

Open Education

Connected LearningHigher Education (as a profession)

Critical Theory, Sociology, & Social Justiceand being a human

Social Network Analysis

Medical Education

Motherhood

Working Motherhood

Work-Life Balance

Practice Questions(General)

Practice Questions(GYN-specific)

Patient-specific Questions

Ethical Questions

Gender-specific

LGBQT Related Questions

Racial Tension

Class inequality

Hospital Culture

Insurance & Political & Legal

YOUNG DR. GOGIA’S QUESTIONS

Undocumented Migrant Workers

Extreme Gerontology

End-of-life care

Human Resources

Rural Lifestyle

Sexual Harassment & Gender Bias

Inter-racial/inter-cultural childrearing

Critical Theory, Sociology, & Public Policy

Discipline-based practice & learning

Medicine (as a profession)

Being a human

Academic Twitter is the portal into my personal learning network.

However, many digital platforms support the work-activities I do with my PLN.*

*Disclaimer: Digital platforms are my least favorite way of thinking about a PLN.

How do PLNs work for professional advancement?mentoring?self-directed learning?saving time?

Professional Development ° Teaching & Learning ° Voice & Contribution ° Lifelong Learning & Wellbeing

Giving

ReceivingCollaborating

Personal Learning Networks are relationships.

Example 1: PLNs for professional advancement.

I wanted to gain recognition and traction within a specific professional group at a conference.

I had thought my dissertation advisor would attend the conference with me and could introduce me to people. When he was unable to go at the last minute, I had to come up with another plan.

So I live-tweeted the conference within an inch of its life.

I have some brand recognition on Twitter as a graduate student with a memorable name and a consistent record of live-tweeting.

Giving

ReceivingCollaborating

I ask presenters permission in advance, and I tag them in my tweets so they can check my work. Sometimes speakers give me copies of their slides to include in my tweets.

I try to be accurate and comprehensive. I try to use photos effectively. I include links in my tweets to the presenter’s other work.

I take live-tweeting seriously, like a job.

I was approached by numerous speakers, conference organizers, and key participants for conversations around their and my research, as well as digital and open scholarship.

I was asked to be involved with the organizing the conference the following year.

Personal learning networks depend on each other for information dissemination. Those who can’t go to conferences depend on live-tweeters to keep them in the loop.

Conferences and speakers benefit from the publicity received through live-tweeting. They prefer to work with live-tweeters who will quote them appropriately.

Live-tweeters benefit from this practice by growing their own personal learning network. Furthermore, live-tweeting is an excellent form of note-taking and participatory learning.

Live-tweeting conferences, webinars – even graduate school classes – are an excellent way for students to make a contribution to the network and capture the attention of key participants.

Example 2: Mentoring and Learning Communities

What is a learning community?

Three of the learning communities that have developed within my personal learning network

Mapping the development of a learning community. I participate in the Twitter component of a c-MOOC.

Through my Twitter interactions related to this hashtag, I become recognized as someone researching connected learning for her doctoral work.

I share my mock prospectus slides on my blog (via an embed from slideshare.net)

I advertise my blog post on Twitter, using the c-MOOC hashtag.

The same people with whom I tweet in the c-MOOC look at my presentation and comment on my blog post.

Sidebar: What’s a c-MOOC?

Mapping the development of a mentoring relationship. I notice a trend in the comments (both on my blog and Twitter) towards an interesting research question.

I propose the research question and summarize the comments through a Storify (which I publish on my blog and promote through Twitter).

Several scholars express interest; we communicate through google plus and arrange times for regular google hangouts.

We collaborate via google hangout and google docs towards a conference proposal and publications.

We become friends as well as professional colleagues.

Summary Points Personal Learning Networks can support a number of private interactions that facilitate confidential mentoring scenarios.

These mentoring scenarios can span geographic distances.

These scenarios put people with different skill sets and levels of experience together for rich learning experiences

Medical Context: How might medical students and practitioners benefit from these scenarios?

Example 3: Self-directed Learning

For purposes of personal and professional growth, I felt it was important to broaden my understanding of critical theory and identity studies.

I took to Twitter to find alternative perspectives and meaningful news sources, such as Black Twitter.

I didn’t know where to start. How did I expand my personal learning network to cover these topics?

Sidebar: What is Black Twitter?

Hashtags. #CharlestonSyllabus

Observe your network. See who they follow and retweet.

Actively ask your network for help, i.e. “seeding your network.” Seen in the form of #FollowFridays, #ScholarSundays, #WomenWednesdays

Who seeds your students’ networks?

Example 5: Saving Time

WorkflowThe trick is to find ways to make yourself useful to other people while you are doing things you’d be

doing anyway.

Train yourself to think…• Should I tweet out this great article

rather than just emailing it to one colleague?

• Would this make a good blog post rather than an email or a cocktail party monologue?

• Should I publish this presentation to slideshare instead of emailing it to the class after I’m done?

• Can I publish these patient handouts I made for public download rather than just having paper copies in my office?

• Should I live-tweet this conference presentation instead of just leaning over and whispering to the person sitting next to me?

My workflow is best demonstrated through my e-portfolio.

My website on connected learningMy blogMy experimental study group’s websiteMy website about my dissertation research

Link to SlideshareLink to YouTubeLink to my Flickr account (my presentations)

Twitter Feed

Link to my Academia.edu

www.lauragogia.com