The Bay Area Open Science Group welcomed Dr. Dana Larsen, principal investigator of a UCSF Innovations Funding in Education study on 9/27/22. Dr. Larsen gave a really engaging presentation about #FOAMed (Free Open Access Medical education: online resources which are free and generally represent a crowdsourcing of content, such as blogs, microblogs (Twitter), podcasts, and online journal clubs), and how medical trainees are utilizing and sharing these online educational resources. While FOAMed use has been increasing within medical education--particularly during COVID--limited data exists on how FOAMed supplements trainees' knowledge and stimulates self-directed learning. Dr. Larsen spoke about FOAMed generally, and also shared her design-based research project seeking to pragmatically build an adjunct curriculum for nephrology fellows using FOAMed resources.
A few things struck me during the presentation–
Reproducibility - Although the focus was on Nephrology fellows and their use of FOAMed resources, the range of resources used and the community spirit felt very reproducible, and could be adapted to other communities with their own applicable resources.
Role of the library - Many of the resources are created by and shared completely outside of a typical library’s collecting and discovery workflows. Some of these resources are the types of things we might share in a libguide (I could imagine embedding a box showcasing a #NEPHJC (Nephrology Journal Club) tweet stream, but I question the utility of that.
Engagement - Use of and engagement with these resources looks different from journal downloads, or other typical library statistics.
The Renal Fellow Network, a forum to discuss interesting nephrology cases, scientific papers, and other topics, saw a rise from 25,000 unique monthly visitors in 2011 to 50,000 in 2018.
Tweetorials attract different levels of engagement, from different audiences, locally and globally.
Stages of adoption - the growth and development of FOAMed follows Roger’s Diffusion of Innovation theory, adapted in Chan, et al (2020). This chart also resonated with me and felt applicable to the work and growth of Seismica, a completely different community but also one trying to share research in a novel way.
Not to be too starry-eyed, but one of the things I really appreciate about the Bay Area Open Science Group meetings is that each session brings a new perspective and a new approach to the broad practice of open science.
-- New follower of @NephJC reporting in.
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