CHICAGO – Social networking tools are slowly making their way into the curricula of medical and nursing schools, according to a study published in the Journal of the Medical Library Association.

According to the survey, 53 percent of nursing schools and 45 percent of medical schools use Web 2.0 tools in their curricula. A separate survey conducted in 2007 revealed that medical students and practitioners would like more training to become proficient users of Web 2.0 tools.

Based on the results in the study, a greater percentage of nursing schools use Web 2.0 tools in their curricula, although a larger number of respondents from medical schools make greater personal use of the tools than do nursing school respondents – 55 percent of medical school respondents use the tools personally, while only 37 percent of nursing school respondents use them.

The survey shows that 58 percent of nursing schools plan to implement Web 2.0 tools in their curricula during the upcoming year, compared to half of all medical schools.

The most common Web 2.0 tools used in the curricula of both medical and nursing schools are blogs, wikis, videocasts and podcasts.
 
In nursing schools, Web 2.0 tools used in the curriculum include  podcasts (43 percent), academic support (43 percent) and videocasts (14 percent). In medical schools, the popular tools are podcasts (30 percent), wikis (30 percent), blogs (20 percent) and, at 10 percent each, videocasts and Moodle (a free Web application used by educators to create online learning sites).

Fifty-five people responded to the survey – which authors say makes it difficult to predict whether Web 2.0 tools "portends a growing trend in education or merely represents a passing fad."

If the popularity of social networking tools transfers into the fields of medical and nursing education, they said, then medical librarians will have an opportunity to train faculty, students and practitioners in the use of these tools.