At Your Fingertips: A Case Study Exploring the Effects of Sharing Digital Video Teaching Tips within a Learning Community of Family Medicine Professionals

Abstract

Today’s medical faculty members are faced with different challenges than their predecessors in teaching tomorrow’s physicians. Medical faculty members are now expected not only to be medical content experts, but also expert educators. The majority of the professional development activities available to them, however, are still focused on biomedical knowledge or the improvement of clinical practices. This article explores a faculty development project at the University of Ottawa’s Department of Family Medicine (DFM) aimed at improving teaching skills through the online sharing of video teaching tips created by DFM faculty members. Guided by the W(e)Learn Framework, a validated theoretical framework for the design and evaluation of online learning resources, a mixed-methods case study was designed and executed to investigate the impact of this faculty development project on the medical educator learning community. Data from the survey (N=33) and interviews (N=10) were analysed and relevant themes were identified and discussed in the context of the literature. Survey participants responded positively towards the project, finding the tips to be useful, enjoyable, and to have the potential to stimulate knowledge sharing between colleagues and within a learning community. Interview participants corroborated the survey results and additionally reported positive aspects to their colleagues being tip presenters; to the videos being concise; and to the tip videos being accessible anywhere and at any time via the Internet. Issues and concerns with organizational integration and support, as well as with integration into a curriculum were also reported by interview participants. Recommendations were then provided for improving the project as well as suggestions to support the development of similar online professional development resources based on the study findings. Finally, future directions for related research were suggested and other areas of research interest were identified.