FEATURES OF A VIRTUAL LEARNING COMMUNITY IN A BLENDED CORSE OF CLINICAL METHODOLOGY

For three years, the course of Clinical Methodology for medical students in the third year is being delivered based upon a blend of formal lessons, tutorials and online activities. Besides the availability of resources and self-evaluation tools, the online component of the course encompasses sessions of both synchronous and asynchronous discussion on easy simulations of clinical conditions and basic laboratory or EKG findings. We reviewed the transcripts of the discussion forums to look for the generic features of the virtual communities created during the course and to assess the presence of possible special characteristics of a virtual community of junior medical students. We observed the usual indicators of“social presence”like humor, interactive responses and expressions of mood and noted that social interaction was stronger about organisational topics. On the other hand, focussing on clinical topics produced a high rate of participation but with a lower interaction (i.e. shorter threads). Interaction however, when present, often assumed the traits of “peer support” and of cooperative construction of meaning. A mechanism that proved to strongly enhance responsiveness was to avoid giving the whole clinical information at the beginning of the simulation but to split it in bits and gradually provide further elements and hints.