Medicine 2.0 and Medical Faculty Development

Medicine 2.0

The University of Saskatchewan, like many Canadian Universities, has 800 part-time medical faculty members scattered throughout the province, many of them working in small communities with limited opportunities to attend faculty development workshops in urban locations. Having faculty development personnel travel to remote locations to conduct workshops 1-1 is economically challenging and may not meet the needs for collegial interaction. As Saskatchewan moves towards a more distributed medical education model, new pedagogies and technology become essential topics for faculty awareness. In the past 5 years, there has been a rapid increase in online technology that allows dispersed communities to interact with one another. Web 2.0 refers to online tools such as blogs, wikis, social networks and virtual simulations that allow participants to involve themselves in learning and connecting to others at a distance. Combine these tools with the need for faculty development and the University of Saskatchewan sees an obvious fit both in the ability to offer learning opportunities and to role model how to use Web 2.0 technology with medical students. Deirdre Bonnycastle, the Clinical Teaching Development Coordinator for the College of Medicine will discuss the successes and failures of the Web 2.0 tools such as Elluminate, Moodle, blogs, wikis, podcasts, Second Life, Facebook, Ning and TeacherTube that she has used as a faculty development tool.