Analysing health professionals' learning interactions in online social networks: A social network analysis approach

TL;DR

This study uses Social Network Analysis to examine how health professionals interact in online networks, revealing a centralized, loosely connected structure with low participation, and highlighting potential for small group learning.

Contribution

It demonstrates the application of SNA to analyze health professionals' online learning interactions, providing insights into network structure and participation patterns.

Findings

Network is highly centralized and loosely connected

Participation levels are generally low

Interactions are mainly among moderators and core members

Abstract

Online Social Networking may be a way to support health professionals' need for continuous learning through interaction with peers and experts. Understanding and evaluating such learning is important but difficult, and Social Network Analysis (SNA) offers a solution. This paper demonstrates how SNA can be used to study levels of participation as well as the patterns of interactions that take place among health professionals in a large online professional learning network. Our analysis has shown that their learning network is highly centralised and loosely connected. The level of participation is low in general, and most interactions are structured around a small set of users consisting of moderators and core members. The structural patterns of interaction indicates there is a chance of small group learning occurring and requires further investigation to identify those potential learning groups. This first stage of analysis, to be followed by longitudinal study of the dynamics of interaction and complemented by content analysis of their discussion, may contribute to greater sophistication in the analysis and utilisation of new environments for health professional learning.