Professional Documents
Culture Documents
" A good quartet is like a good conversation among friends interacting to each other's
ideas. "
- American saxophonist, Stan Getz
Action
During my second cycle, I observed learners' reactions to the media work of their
colleagues and noted their responses. One of things that I found most interesting is that
many clinicians were frustrated by the fact that their colleagues were using media
technology to create useful training resources, but the resources went relatively
unpublicized, and in some cases were difficult to find at all. One of the underlying themes
during these discussions was that there needed to be a centralized place for clinicians to
go and locate online training materials. One of the clinical managers, Audrey, suggested
a Sharepoint site. I was elated by this suggestion because it demonstrated the type of
critical thinking about technology that I have been trying to encourage throughout my
research. Audrey analyzed the benefits and uses of a tool like Sharepoint, and offered up
the idea of using it to host other media.
Gaining access to a Sharepoint site in our organization is relatively easy. We simply
needed to request one and have the developers build it. Because I was publishing all the
media on our streaming servers, all that we needed to do was design the site and add
links to the media. This became the crux of my cycle three action. Audrey, acting as co-
expert, and myself created a comprehensive Sharepoint site to group together media
links for clinical training.
“Expert as Equal”
My Research
My third cycle was where I began to feel that the community of practice I was
trying to establish in my previous cycles began to take shape. The first cycle used
scaffolded instruction to make newcomers feel more comfortable using new media
technologies, and the second cycle invited nonparticipants to think about the media
created by their predecessors and how it might enhance their department training. The
third cycle laid the foundation for a solid, sustainable community. Sharepoint provides a
platform for members of the community to interact. Prior to this cycle, there was no way
to establish the feeling of a cohesive group. Users can certainly collaborate on specific
projects or discuss media through email, but Sharepoint can promote the group in a
much more public setting, especially by enabling comments on posted presentations.
Users can visit the page to view presentations, symposiums, demonstrations, etc, and
leave comments and offer direct feedback. The site also increases the visibility of the
media, and delivers the “media repository” that the colleagues from my second cycle
explained was lacking.
Evidence
My third cycle relied heavily on two important pieces of collected data. The first
came in the form of answers to questions about how the site should be set up, and the
second involved my continuing look at overall streaming media usage, and whether or
not the usage increased as a result of the Sharepoint site.
As I mentioned in the previous section, I felt at the start of this cycle that our
learning community was reaching a final stage in the scaffolding process. Taking this into
consideration, I allowed my clinical colleagues to act as experts in the creation of the
site. As site administrators, it was up to them to determine the interactivity and access of
users. I relinquished my role to that of “technical liason,” meaning I helped them with
site administration and page design, but any authoritative decisions regarding the site
were theirs. I felt that, because they still viewed themselves as novices, I had to be
careful how I proposed this. I couldn't simply say, “It's your site, do what you want.”
What I chose to do was ask questions, and hope that they would find that their answers
would determine the course of the site creation, which it did. Below are the questions
that I asked to both Audrey, and one of the other clinicians listed as site administrator.
– “Will this be a one way medium? Meaning are you looking for clinicians to interact,
or are you looking for a place to post training materials for viewing?”
These questions allowed for my colleagues to think about their site creation in a
way that they probably had not yet done, and also helped to increase their knowledge
about online networking, page permissions, and website administration. What was
determined from this line of questioning was that Audrey and her colleague wished to
create a site that was open to all clinical staff. Furthermore, they wanted to enable
comments on presentations, as well as create a page to list discussion board topics. It is
here that “interactive conversation” could take place. Blog posting was to be limited
strictly to site owners, and would be used primarily for announcements. Because of the
one-way nature of an announcement, blog post comments were to be disabled. At the
core of the site was to be a navigation menu leading to sub-pages arranged by topic.
Each of these sub-pages would include a presentation title, a powerpoint file available for
download, and a link to watch the streaming media presentation. To many, this sounds
like simple Sharepoint site administration, but in the context of my action research, it
represented a breakthrough. My clinical colleagues were able to make decisions and
customize an online community under the guise of clinical administration. By thinking
critically about site access, blogs, discussion boards, and comments, they were able to
learn more about web 2.0 technologies and how to include online media in their day to
day operations. Once the parameters of the site were established, it was published and
therefore available as a resource for extracting usage data.
The overarching goal of my research has been to increase the use of streaming
media in my organization. The best way to gauge the impact of my research is to look at
the quantitative data generated, which exists in the form of published presentations and
views. During each cycle, I look at the number of overall presentations published,
While streaming media use has increased gradually over time, it is difficult to
determine what might have a significant impact. What jumped out at me was how quickly
news of the clinical education Sharepoint spread, and the actions it lead to. Soon after
the site's creation, I was approached by Kirsten, a nursing manager, about an upcoming
vascular symposium. She explained to me that, because our conference center has a
built in hard disk recorder, she wanted to record the symposium and post each individual
presentation on the streaming server, which could then be linked to from the Sharepoint
site. Occasions such as this were evidence that the creation of the Sharepoint site was
going to change the way clinicians used online media. I offered my help to Kirsten in
recording her symposium, and then encoded the videos to publish to the streaming
server. The vascular symposium, which ran from 8am – 12pm on a Friday, resulted in 6
presentations published to both the streaming server and the Sharepoint site. This marks
a drastic increase in use and serves as a model for digitizing future symposiums. Our
organization's conference center hosts multiple clinical training events per month
featuring renowned doctors from across the region, as well as the world. Taking that into
consideration, it is not unlikely that we could see over 20 additional presentations
published per month as a result of the Sharepoint site. This is an effective way to archive
clinical training seminars for clinicians in other facilities, regions, or even states to
access.
By posting these presentations to the Sharepoint site, we've also opened the door
to new data collection. 6 to 12 months into the future, we will be able to look at the
frequency of comments and how users interact on the site. This data will eventually tell
us more about our workforce and their propensity to use online media, as well as the
ways in which they access it, and for what purpose.
Analysis/Reflection
My third cycle began as something of an enigma. It was the first time during my
research that I was really uncertain not only of the action, but of my role in it. Creating a
Sharepoint site seemed like a great opportunity to make streaming media presentations
more accessible, but how did it really tie into my research? More importantly, after
coming this far, would there be a paradigm shift? Would I be able to realize progress? Or
would my colleagues use me as a crutch in the Sharepoint site development, much like
they were using me as a crutch to create their media this time last year. I was confronted
by the realization that this cycle would not only include an action, but would also act as a
barometer to measure my colleagues' change in thinking. What I didn't anticipate was
having to question my own change in thinking, and whether or not I let my perceived
label of expert define me.
Throughout my research I have focused on my role in defining a new community of
practice. My role of expert was designated not only by my job title, but by my colleagues.
When I took my current position in our organization, I was always introduced as “Jason,
our new media guru,” or “Jason, our new streaming genius.” Don't get me wrong, there
are worse introductions, but I never realized the impact that this would have down the
road. My colleagues were assigning me a label, and as Kierkegaard once said, “Once you