- How would you create a PLN prior to engaging a social media campaign on a topic of your choice?
I would like to answer this question from two standpoints: how do I reach people that I would like to include in my PLN, and how would I organize contents in my PLN. To reach people that I would like to include in my PLN, I would start with people that I have personally connections with. Being a university student, I could reach a large number of other students who may have the same interests with me. ‘The people around you have a wealth of information” (Woods). By connecting with these people, I could start building a network for interactive working. And as the network matures, me and other members in the PLN could start including more people into the network. As the network becomes bigger and bigger, me and other members in the PLN could utilize the power of social media platforms – we could create a hasgtag on Twitter for the specific topic that we are interested in. By moving the conversation on a public platform, our PLN would invite even more insights from the Internet. Their are also tools that we could utilize. For example, in order to activate conversations, we could utilize tweet chat, which is a scheduled chat that imitates chats in real life (Woods). And to reach professional in the field such as scholars and working practitioners, we could utilize emails and resources such as personal websites.
To organize contents in my PLN, instead of a strictly professional approach, I would adopt a more personal approach. The #MedTwitter hashtag is a good example. In addition to knowledge and information in the field of medicine, people also post about their experiences working as physicians and their concerns about how people of color are sometimes neglected in the conversation. The freedom to talk about personal experiences gives people a sense of belonging in the PLN, which would help the PLN to sustain for a long time. And the freedom to talk about sensitive topics would not only make the discussions more meaningful, but also would make the PLN more inclusive.
References
Woods, Bianca. “Building your own PLN: seeking new insights and ideas? Expand your personal learning network.” T+D, vol. 67, no. 11, Nov. 2013, p. 70+. Gale OneFile: Business, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A348998538/ITBC?u=uvictoria&sid=ITBC&xid=1010abdf. Accessed 21 Feb. 2021.
Hello Heidi! You have raised interesting points in your discussion post. I cannot agree more when you said that you would like to adopt a personal approach in your PLN rather than a strictly professional approach. I believe that you will be able to connect or reach more people who would like to know more about the medicine field if you utilized that kind of approach. That is because with the personal approach, the majority will not feel intimidated and they will also be encouraged to ask questions.
Hi Xitang,
Thank you for your comment. I totally agree with what you said. I think adopting a more personal approach would definitely reach more people than a strictly professional approach because it will make the discussion much more friendly to people who do not have much expertise but are very interested in the field (like myself lol) and people who are prospect professionals to the field (eg: someone who is newly admitted to a med school). Making people not feel intimidated in is a major factor that facilitates discussion and communication.
Hi Heidi,
I liked the way that you described utilizing social media to grow an existing PLN even larger. I know that this type of method can be used in Science to reach out to specialists to collaborate on papers without having to be located in the same place. The use of PLNs is definitely helping to advance science and our understanding of a vast number of topics.
It seems like this model could also be quite useful for a club of students at UVic, for example! It may be difficult to prioritize a certain interest on your own and to reach out to professionals in the community as an individual, but as a group I think this becomes easier.
Relating to MED Twitter I also really enjoy that people are using social media
platforms to talk about the hardships that professionals have faced in getting to where they are and to discuss things like ‘imposter syndrome’. I find that knowing someone else has experienced hardship as well and has not let it affect their goals is very inspiring and normalizes this experience for me. I also think it’s nice that in some cases social media platforms can be used for mentorship as well!
Hi Rachelle,
Thank you for commenting! And thank you for sharing the information about the practices in the field of science. I have no idea that it works that way! Thank you for telling me. And I totally agree with you that learning about other people’s hardships is inspiring. In my opinion, although these information does not strictly count as professional knowledge, it is still valuable and educational information for certain people such as prospect med students. It also helps to educate the public about the hardships that professionals go through, which could improve people’s sense of appreciation towards the profession.
Heidi
Thanks for sharing this information. I am happy that you gave the suggestion #MedTwitter. I personally did not know that this existed and it seems like a great way to get more specific information and hear about other peoples experiences. This would be really cool!
Hi Callim,
Thank you for commenting! I actually found #MedTwitter in Jesse’s post on our course website. He gave three examples that are all interesting and inspiring, I recommend that you check them out. I too really enjoyed reading contents under that hasgtag. In addition to knowledge related to medicine, it also gives a taste of what it is like being a physician. After reading that Twitter thread, I was actually thinking about a Twitter hashtag #UVICLife, where we post about what life in UVIC is like. That would also be really cool lol.