TY - GEN
T1 - Lessons learnt from a MOOC about social media for digital health literacy
AU - Atique, Suleman
AU - Hosueh, Mowafa
AU - Fernandez-Luque, Luis
AU - Gabarron, Elia
AU - Wan, Marian
AU - Singh, Onkar
AU - Salcedo, Vicente Traver
AU - Li, Yu Chuan Jack
AU - Shabbir, Syed Abdul
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 IEEE.
PY - 2016/10/13
Y1 - 2016/10/13
N2 - Nowadays, the Internet and social media represent prime channels for health information seeking and peer support. However, benefits of health social media can be reduced by low digital health literacy. We designed a massive open online course (MOOC) course about health social media to increase the students' digital health literacy. In this course, we wanted to explore the difficulties confronted by the MOOC users in relation to accessing quality online health information and to propose methods to overcome the issues. An online survey was carried out to assess the students' digital health literacy. This survey was one of the activities for the enrolled learners in an online course entitled 'Social Media in Health Care' on 'FutureLearn', one of the popular MOOC platforms. The course was hosted by Taipei Medical University, Taiwan. Data from a total of 300 respondents were collected through the online survey from 14 December 2015 to 10 January 2016. Most participants (61%) considered finding online health information is easy or very easy, while 39% were unsure or found it difficult to retrieve online health information. Most (63%) were not sure about judging whether available information can be used for making health decisions. This study indicates a demand for more training to increase skills to improve the capability of health consumers to identify trustworthy, useful health information. More research to understand the health information seeking process will be crucial in identifying the skillsets that need to be further developed. MOOCs about digital health can be a great source of knowledge when it comes to studying patients' needs.
AB - Nowadays, the Internet and social media represent prime channels for health information seeking and peer support. However, benefits of health social media can be reduced by low digital health literacy. We designed a massive open online course (MOOC) course about health social media to increase the students' digital health literacy. In this course, we wanted to explore the difficulties confronted by the MOOC users in relation to accessing quality online health information and to propose methods to overcome the issues. An online survey was carried out to assess the students' digital health literacy. This survey was one of the activities for the enrolled learners in an online course entitled 'Social Media in Health Care' on 'FutureLearn', one of the popular MOOC platforms. The course was hosted by Taipei Medical University, Taiwan. Data from a total of 300 respondents were collected through the online survey from 14 December 2015 to 10 January 2016. Most participants (61%) considered finding online health information is easy or very easy, while 39% were unsure or found it difficult to retrieve online health information. Most (63%) were not sure about judging whether available information can be used for making health decisions. This study indicates a demand for more training to increase skills to improve the capability of health consumers to identify trustworthy, useful health information. More research to understand the health information seeking process will be crucial in identifying the skillsets that need to be further developed. MOOCs about digital health can be a great source of knowledge when it comes to studying patients' needs.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85009129571&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/EMBC.2016.7592005
DO - 10.1109/EMBC.2016.7592005
M3 - Conference contribution
C2 - 28269533
AN - SCOPUS:85009129571
T3 - Proceedings of the Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBS
SP - 5636
EP - 5639
BT - 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2016
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, EMBC 2016
Y2 - 16 August 2016 through 20 August 2016
ER -