Communicating in the Twenty-First Century
How Technology is Changing Interactions Between Health Centers and Students
Technology and health care are close partners. As technology advances, more and more sophisticated tools are created that effectively help improve the quality of people’s lives, whether by helping to diagnose illnesses sooner or treat health problems in a less invasive way. A few examples from the last 20 years: laser eye surgery, drug-eluting stents, blood glucose monitors — and Facebook.
Yes, Facebook. With all of the impressive advances in medical tools, it’s easy to forget that communication also plays a big part in health care. Letting the community know what services you provide, how to stay healthy (presented in a non-didactic way), and even answering general health questions can all be achieved more effectively — especially on campus — with a combination of traditional and higher-tech methods.
Web- and Internet-based tools have been overwhelmingly embraced by the current generation of 18 to 24 year–olds. A recent study from Michigan State University found that 94 percent of students have a Facebook account, and according to the most recent National College Health Assessment (NCHA) survey data, the Internet or World Wide Web is the second most frequently used source of health-related information by students after only their parents. Students are, however, selective about the type of tools they prefer. E-mail would seem to most of us who aren’t members of Generation Y to be a high-tech, useful means of communication, but as Lev Gonick, PhD, vice president for information technology services and chief information officer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, explains, “E-mailing, in the minds of our students, is something that their parents’ generation did. They’re looking for an informal platform, and that’s a social network.”
Social networks, such as Myspace, Facebook, and even Second Life, are relationship based and focus on being part of a community. Research has shown that using social networks can help a user develop a sense of belonging and feeling connected to others. But is this something that faculty should leave to the students, or can it be something that health centers and other departments leverage to communicate effectively with students on their terms? Gonick, who is also chair of the 2008 Horizon project advisory board, which predicts technology trends that impact education, believes so.
“Other methods of communication, including e-mail, posters and fliers, are all part of the mix,” he comments. “We’re talking about a portfolio of methods, rather than a binary choice of either/or. But we’ve really experienced a formal and informal communication shift. Rather than swimming against the tide, the most valuable way we can communicate to the broad middle of our student body is to include social networking to create not just a transmission of information, but a dialogue.”
Social networks can be a useful way to publicize events, post opening hours and other notifications, provide useful links to other sources of information and raise awareness of the health center and its staff, making it seem more approachable rather than a faceless, formal service. There are, however, many who feel uncomfortable using social networking systems to communicate with students. Some health center directors have concerns about the alarming potential for students to share their private health information in an unsecured public forum.
“There are certainly guidelines we’ll have to enforce,” predicts Villanova’s Director of University Information Systems Cletus Rickert, MS. “But we’re going to have to bend a little.” Villanova is in the process of developing a portal that will allow students to access a variety of information and tools from one central point, from their enrollment information to online classes to…yes, the ubiquitous Facebook. One advantage of the portal is the ability for students to choose how they would prefer to receive messages from faculty.
“We haven’t included the health center yet for this project because of the regulations involved, but we have made changes and we’ll continue to do so,” explains Rickert. “It will just be in small steps rather than leaps and bounds.”
Additional concerns from health center directors about utilizing social networking include encroaching on students’ territory, as well as fears about their staffs’ personal privacy and even stalking and identity theft. This stems from the fact that most social networking sites do not cater to groups or departments that want to set up a general, less personal profile not linked to an individual. Gonick is sympathetic to concerns about privacy, but believes that to keep up with this radical shift in communication, staffs’ mindsets need to change.
“I think that the experience of the social networking world demands a face or a name or a person, and that’s the expectation of the student community,” he attests. “Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of institutions in general to move away from the depersonalized e-mail coming from a department address or department site. College staffs that are resisting do so at their own peril. The idea that anonymity is acceptable will place them at a disadvantage.”
Colleges and universities across the nation seem to be slowly recalibrating in line with the challenges and advantages of being able to have this kind of dialogue with their students. But technology is not just helping “relationship-based” communication to evolve — it is also providing more opportunities to create a network of knowledge and information. This is usually called collective intelligence, and a basic iteration is already utilized not just by students, but also by a large percentage of college health professionals in the form of listservs.
Wikipedia is probably the best-known and largest collective intelligence tool, and it also showcases the universal pros and cons of collective intelligence. Anyone can post and be a part of the community — but because of this, the information that is on the site may not be 100 percent reliable or an exhaustive treatment of a topic. It is a good starting point for research, but should not be used as a single source of information. For the seasoned user, there tend to be clues to how valid an article is (such as whether it quotes sources or has been flagged as needing cleanup), but at the heart of collective intelligence lies one big assumption: that its users are savvy enough to use it as just one part of their research.
This assumption may worry some users, but it seems to be part of the communications paradigm shift. Rickert thinks that one factor will be king as collective intelligence evolves, and that’s the source of the information.
“What might limit collective intelligence tools is their credibility and whom they are associated with,” he says. “Students and educators alike will find a source they trust and go from there.”
Gonick agrees, and adds that there’s a responsibility as an educator to teach students to be “intelligent and critical” and use these tools in the correct way.
“This is an important constraint; there should be expert and editorial oversight,” he says. “The faculty community has a responsibility to engage with the collective intelligence movement to help qualify and editorially filter the kind of materials that students are both using and producing. It should not be left entirely to the wisdom of the crowds.”
One collective intelligence tool in the field of health care already seems to be a trusted source of information for students. A Columbia university-created site called Go Ask Alice! allows those with health questions, however personal or basic, to have them answered by health care professionals. Knowing that it’s not just your roommate or a student down the hall giving their expert opinion on whether that rash could be anything to worry about provides a greater level of confidence in the sagacity of the answers.
For college health professionals themselves, collective intelligence provides some great opportunities with the same set of caveats. Whether you’ve read an article and can’t remember its title, have a question about best practices, or want to see if trends you’re spotting on your campus are the same across the country, collective intelligence can help. Replacing the traditional listserv format are new portals such as College Health Info, which feature forum discussions split into categories, a jobs board, and calendars of events. Sites such as Ask Dr.Wiki – designed to provide specialty-specific medical information for health care providers, written by health care providers – have created credibility with users because contributors are required to submit their credentials before they are allowed to contribute to the site.
Gonick thinks that this is only the beginning, and that the college health professionals of the future will have already had extensive experience of using more sophisticated forms of collective intelligence.
“Students in our medical school are already using wiki technology to prepare their curriculum material and share their case based method of learning,” he explains. “Emerging forms of collective intelligence will probably include everything from textbooks being written collectively to surveys being broadly shared in a way that allows for a more engaged medical education, based not just on textbooks but on real patient-based learning experiences.”
Tips for approaching new communications technology in your health center:
- Talk to other departments
Your IT department should be the first department you contact — they’ll be able to answer any technical questions you may have and will also be able to tell you if there are any other developments such as university-wide portals in the pipeline that should be taken into consideration. Additionally, find out which other departments or groups have social networking profiles and talk to them about their experiences. - Talk to your students
“Talk to students to try and figure out how to come up with a solution that’s secure, one where it’s clear who’s sending and endorsing the message,” suggests Rickert. “Also, find out how they prefer to be contacted.” This may have to do with the frequency of the messaging as well as the medium. - Develop a best practices document
Sit down with representatives from other departments that use social networks, IT, students, and your health center staff. Create policies for using social networking sites. For example, state that they shouldn’t be used to communicate any private health information. Decide whether you want health center staff’s profiles to be only visible to those in your university network. Develop rules for dealing with offensive comments. Make sure these policies are supported by students as well as staff. You may even want to gather such information from other colleges by using collective intelligence! - Recognize that social networks are not going away any time soon
You may have reservations about using social networking sites, but Lev Gonick points out, “You can’t put the genie back in the bottle and tell them that social networking is going away. There are 160 million people with Facebook profiles.” It’s your prerogative not to use these tools, but it is likely to slowly impact the success of your communication efforts. What you can try to do is develop a framework that you are comfortable with to inform the way that you use this technology to interact with your students. - Read up on the trends
Further sources of information include the Horizon report, which is published annually by the New Media Consortium and features predictions about technology trends that will affect education; and Educause, an association of which Rickert is a member, whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.