Meeting Notes and Action Points

Wikipath Community of Practice Meeting/ Workshop

Nottingham Veterinary School Tuesday 15th January 2007

Notes and Actions

Morning Session KW provided an overview of the background to the project and general educational principles, expectations and history. Undergraduates and residents given access to wikivet site and opportunity to try some basic editing/ setting up own pages.

Afternoon Session Feedback from undergraduates indicating their willingness to be part of the project. - keen to extend the disciplines covered beyond pathology. Concerns were raised about image permissions -there are ongoing discussions on this but the group has adopted the principle of removing images where there is any doubt about permission. Interested in collaboration/ contact with students in other schools (those already involved and also encouraging other student to become involved) They would receive £40/day cash payment. Referencing of material should be carried out as good practice. Endocrinology suggested as an area they could begin with. This would be funded by the Nottingham University grant over the summer.

Feedback from residents Issue of potential ‘conflict areas’ raised in the earlier part of the day was discussed [example – lymphoma versus lymphosarcoma]. It was recognised that undergraduates often perceive a need to have a black and white source of information and any uncertainty or conflicting opinions was difficult for them. It was pointed put that the wiki needs to be emphasised as a ‘learning tool and not a textbook’ and that students should be aware of the fact that learning outcomes for given subjects would differ across the schools.

The possibility of using text boxes for residents to leave comments in such areas of differing opinions was also raised and supported as a positive input residents could have. There was a balance needed between something that was excessively rigid at one extreme and at the other something that was unstructured and potentially unmanageable.

The idea of residents contributing by adding cases providing a context around which pathology could be emphasised was supported. RVC already have a graduate contributing in this way and KF would also be a valuable source of input in this area.

It was agreed that a bullet point list of activities that residents could be involved in would be generated. There were 2 clear subdivisions of activity:

Editing (Draft Guidelines)
Contributing new information (Draft Guidelines)

A theme emerging was also that in terms of the wikivet community of practice, residents would be key members but also had a need to build communication amongst their own community which in the UK can tend to be isolating as often there may be only 1 or 2 residents at a given University. It was important that they were not ‘slaves to the wiki’ and in essence developed a parallel CoP which was beneficial to them.

CONTENT It was agreed that Nottingham would begin with a focus on physiology within systems which the student felt most comfortable. It was agreed that with this ‘widening of disciplines’, it would be appropriate to change the name of wikipath to wikivet and begin to embed other disciplines in a systems manner. In effect this brings to an end the CoP funded by HEA (wikipath) and moves the project on to the next phase.

The issue of structure was discussed however it was felt that once content was created, the structure could then emerge from this after further discussion. The advantage of the wiki system was that multiple sources of access could be available.

FINANCES There was still ~10k available in the JISC project and the remaining £630 for the CoP would be payable on completion of a final report to the HEA.
ACTION:SMR

RESEARCH/GRANTS RCVS trust: there was strong support for a cross schools bid to the RCVS trust blue skies for the wikivet project focussing on day one skills. This would:

allow collaboration/ evolution in terms of the skills list
facilitate sharing of content – especially video content of core day one skills

ACTION: KW/NS to draft application for deadline of 23rd January See Application

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE Input from those involved in the project will be sought to allow data to continue to gathered around the formation and experiences with the CoP

CONFERENCES

AVTRW: abstract for educational session needed by the end of the week. Also need to check that pathology sessions and educational sessions don’t clash.

ACTION: SMR

AMEE: Agreed to submit abstract for AMEE. TS to be lead author. To discuss detail at next SKYPE call.

RCPath GR was involved in an RCPath project looking at development of ‘pathopaedia’ . He would eb meeting with KS to discuss the projects and/ or any potential future funding opportunities.

Web address currently wikivet is within the vetschools domain however there was some confusion and potential loss of identity of wikivet within this site. It was decided:

to try for a dedicated url for wikivet
in the meantime keep the vetschools url but link it directly to wikivet to ease any confusion.
to keep the current system for registering to allow an element of control over access.