Teaching and Learning in the Disciplines: August 2012

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Open dialogue in medical education

via e-LiME by Natalie on 8/15/12

The latest edition of Medical Education includes an editorial from Kevin Eva 'Dialogue in Medical Education: enabling the academic voyeur that lurks inside us all'. Alan Cann posted this quote from the piece on Google+ and posed the question, 'Good idea?'.

In this issue of Medical Education, we publish the first article in a new series entitled 'Dialogue'. In this series we will identify pairs of people who do not regularly publish together and ask them to engage in e-mail correspondence over the course of a month. They will be encouraged not to type lengthy opuses, but, rather, to engage in a pithy dialogue in which the pair share their current perspectives on a timely topic of mutual interest.

My response to Alan's question was wouldn't it be better if one of them blogged on a topic and it was open and anyone could pitch in! Duncan Greenhill added

Agreed. Why have a conversation of two when there are so many others who could contribute – including the non-experts who may very well ask the one question that either cuts to the heart of the matter or destroys it completely

Medical Education does have a blog and I wonder whether they considered introducing the dialogue feature there. It would seem like a good place to post these dialogue features particularly given the blog runs under the name of 'Conversations in medical education' and it's open access, unlike the journal. I've not really engaged with the blog, but I don't seem to be alone as there's not much of a conversation going on. There are a few comments around the posts put up during the ASME annual scientific meeting last month but there was a much richer dialogue and conversation happening on Twitter around the conference hashtag #asme2012. That conversation has continued post conference and it's been great to see a few more individuals involved in medical education starting to blog such as Clare Morris over on Medical Education Matters. What about some of the medical education journal editors or former editors doing the same and starting to blog out in the open like like Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ. Or how about these journals look at what others are doing like the Annals of Botany with their blog and Google+ page. I hear from Alan Cann that this is approach is attracting a growing online audience.

So back to Alan's original question is this dialogue feature in Medical Education a good idea, or should it be out in the open? What do you think?

A final thought to close. When I read the Medical Education editorial I was reminded of a conversation between Jim Groom and Gardner Campbel about Edupunk, two parts were recorded and part 1 is below. I like this approach because I get to see them discussing it and hear their voices, I hear the conversation, I'm eavesdropping, but I can embed it in my blog, post it to Google+, Tumblr etc and have my own conversation with others around it … out in the open.