Using analytics and big data in education can provide patterns of communication and connectivity when engaging on social media platforms. Following a hashtag from a conference, online journal club, Tweetchat or online forum can open up a new community of practice around various healthcare specialities. As a facilitator wouldn’t you want to look at the trending words, discussion themes, the number of connections (network analysis) and members of the community (and the influencers)?
Tools such as Symplur can provide social media analytics.
Here are a couple of hashtags to follow and see who the main influencers are:
- #FOANed
- #eNurse
- #nurseeducator
- #Ecmologist (one for the future?)
Nason, G. J., O’Kelly, F., Bouchier-Hayes, D., Quinlan, D. M., & Manecksha, R. P. (2015). Twitter expands the reach and engagement of a national scientific meeting: the Irish Society of Urology. Irish Journal of Medical Science (1971-), 184(3), 685-689.
Roland, D., Spurr, J., & Cabrera, D. (2017). Preliminary evidence for the emergence of a health care online community of practice: using a netnographic framework for Twitter hashtag analytics. Journal of medical Internet research, 19(7).
Thoma, B., Rolston, D., & Lin, M. (2014). Global emergency medicine journal club: Social media responses to the march 2014 annals of emergency medicine journal club on targeted temperature management. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 64(2), 207-212.