A lecture geared towards medical professionals on the power and functionality of personal learning networks.

1. Personal learning networks:
People, not search engines.
Laura Gogia, MD
@googleguacamole • www.lauragogia.com
Academic Learning Transformation Lab • Virginia Commonwealth University
October, 2015

2. Digitally Enhanced
World
Teaching &
Learning
Medicine

3. Digitally Enhanced
World
Teaching &
Learning
Medicine

4. What is Social Media?

5. Social Media
Websites and applications that enable us to create
and share content or to participate in social
networking

6. Create Share Participate
have a voice, contribute to, and learn about our places in the world.
Social media provides us with the potential to

7. What is a Personal Learning Network?

8. 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.

9. A personal learning network is an approach
to (or a philosophy for) using social media.

10. 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?

11. ***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.

12. A former medical
professional
An educational
researcher
An adult human
Why was I invited to speak to your class?
Me

13. 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.

14. I had a lot of questions.

15. 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

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

17. A. Laparoscopic Hysterectomies
Given my context, why is this a problem?

18. 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…

19. So I quit.

20. 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.

21. Three ways to think about a
personal learning network.
People & Topics Digital Platforms Workflow

22. My (current) Twitter network

23. People & Topics in my Twitter Network
Digital Scholarship
Networked Learning
Open Education
Connected LearningHigher Education
(as a profession)
Critical Theory,
Sociology, &
Social Justice
and being a
human
Social Network
Analysis
Medical
Education

24. 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

25. Academic Twitter is the portal into my personal learning network.

26. 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.

27. How do PLNs work for professional advancement?
mentoring?
self-directed learning?
saving time?
Professional Development ° Teaching & Learning ° Voice & Contribution ° Lifelong Learning & Wellbeing

28. Giving
ReceivingCollaborating
Personal Learning Networks are relationships.

29. Example 1: PLNs for professional advancement.

30. 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.

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

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

35. Example 2: Mentoring and Learning Communities
What is a learning community?

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

37. 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?

38. 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.

39. 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?

40. Example 3: Self-directed Learning

41. 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?

42. 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?

43. Example 5: Saving Time

44. Workflow
The 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?

45. My workflow is best demonstrated through my e-portfolio.
My website on connected learning
My blog
My experimental study group’s website
My website about my dissertation research
Link to Slideshare
Link to YouTube
Link to my Flickr account (my presentations)
Twitter Feed
Link to my Academia.edu
www.lauragogia.com