Part 1 – Tools
In reading some of the limited literature around this topic, the majority of online journal clubs run by professional bodies use some form of social media such as Twitter and Facebook. While these do offer the simplest means of interacting, I have concerns about requiring the use of a third party tool that is public for teaching as this could put students off engaging with honest opinions if they know they are public. Some of the literature does discuss HE based online journal clubs and these do indicate that some institutions use some other tools to facilitate the clubs.
Based on the focus on social media solutions used by professional bodies, and the limited literature from HE, I have looked at existing tools within the University as well as
A WordPress site with a chat plugin would allow for complete control over every aspect of the journal club and allow for different resources to be added to it to create a bespoke learning resource that incorporated the journal club, embedded resources like papers and links/embedded content related to the discussions and papers. However, there would be a cost involved for hosting as the WordPress installations available through Swansea University are incredibly limited and do not allow plugins to be installed.
While an online annotation tool would not facilitate the live discussion, it would allow students to comment on a paper/article and share those comments with their group in advance of the discussion. There are a number of tools out there such as Hypothesis, Edji, Annotate and NowComment which provide this functionality however Hypothesis is the only one that has no additional costs.
Teams is available to all staff by default and Postgraduate students on request. Teams allows for synchronous and asynchronous discussion directly on the “course” page. It is relatively simple to use and does not require refreshing the page like discussion boards to view new entries. Students do need to be added manually to the “course” and this may be time consuming.
Blackboard has blogs built into it and therefore could act as another asynchronous method of discussion. Students could post their thoughts on a paper and invite others to comment and discuss.
A wiki based journal club would also be asynchronous. It would be formed of an overview of a paper and then invite comments from students on the paper. This would eventually grow into a large, accessible resource allowing for long term engagement with papers as students develop their analytical skills. There is a wiki tool built into Blackboard and other VLE’s and therefore do not require a third party service.
A private YouTube live stream is a viable option if video is required for the journal club. It can be embedded into the VLE module page both when it is live and if recorded for review at a later date. However, it does require a Google account to comment and comments are limited to 200 characters.
Discussion boards are a standard feature in Blackboard as well as most other VLE’s and therefore relatively future proof. The main downside to them is the need to refresh the page to view new posts as they do not appear to users automatically. This could cause confusion and make it harder for students to engage.
However, if the journal club was to be asynchronous, the discussion board would be the best method of delivery.
We currently have access to Collaborate and this would be an ideal tool to facilitate live discussions with text, voice and video. It can be recorded which means the sessions can be uploaded to Blackboard for reference and revision by students. The main downside to this tool is that currently we do not know what, if any, webinar software we will have access to after the initial pilot. Also, due to the imminent VLE review, we do not know what VLE we have access to in the second year of the course or the functionality it will come with.
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Conclusion
Collaborate or a similar webinar tool is the obvious choice for synchronous online journal clubs with Microsoft Teams a potential backup option. However, uncertainty around the availability of Collaborate means that any tool that is chosen should prioritise text as the primary means of input and video as an option only if access to a webinar tool is available.
If outside contributions, either from other students, experts in the field or those generally interested in the discussion who are not based in the University, are required or can be seen to be useful, the only real options without having to go through a process of getting logins approved would be a webinar solution (as guests can generally be sent a link that works outside of Blackboard), a YouTube live solution or a bespoke tool.
If the journal club can be asynchronous, there are many tools available to facilitate this method of delivery however the benefits of live discussion such as interacting with peers would be lost.
The Open University has an ongoing project around online journal clubs that will use a dedicated website and webinar tools to facilitate the club. I have reached out to the team working on this project however have not had a reply as of yet.
References
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/chp.21275
https://www.jgme.org/doi/full/10.4300/JGME-D-15-00070.1
https://www.jgme.org/doi/full/10.4300/JGME-D-14-00488.1
https://www.jem-journal.com/article/S0736-4679(08)00870-6/fulltext
Part 2 – Planning and facilitation
Ten Steps for Setting Up an Online Journal Club
The paper “Ten Steps for Setting Up an Online Journal Club”, is primarily based on the use of Twitter but some of the steps may still be relevant to other tools. These include:
- Step 1: Create an Online Home Page That Serves as a Launching Pad for Your Journal Club Discussions
- Step 4: Ensure That the Time of the Journal Club Is Convenient for Your Target Audience
- Step 5: Help Prepare Participants by Aggregating Other Online Resources Relevant to the Article
- Step 6: Consider Inviting the Authors of the Featured Article or Other Experts in the Field
- Step 8: Engage the Participants to Cultivate and In-centivize More Discussion
How these may work for a non-Twitter based club is discussed below.
Create an Online Home Page That Serves as a Launching Pad for Your Journal Club Discussions
Regardless of the tool used to facilitate the discussion, a journal club “home page” can be created on the VLE that collates guidance on how to use the facilitation tool, background information on reviewing a paper/article, a demo video of a paper/article being reviewed and information on the club schedule with links to the appropriate tool.
Ensure That the Time of the Journal Club Is Convenient for Your Target Audience
Understanding students is vital and a short survey sent out with their welcome pack can help provide key information like when they are likely to be available and, if students are international, what time zone they are in. This early data gathering can help schedule journal clubs far in advance which is also useful to students as they can plan in advance and change work schedules etc.
Help Prepare Participants by Aggregating Other Online Resources Relevant to the Article
As discussed above, having resources available on the home page for the club can help students prepare for the online journal club.
Consider Inviting the Authors of the Featured Article or Other Experts in the Field
If the club is facilitated using a University based tool, this may be difficult due to access rights. However, for papers/articles written by University staff, this should be a consideration either in the initial journal club or as a follow-up session. It would help students understanding by being able to dig deeper into the paper/article as well as learn to challenge parts they may disagree with.
Engage the Participants to Cultivate and In-centivize More Discussion
The moderator/host of the club should be fully engaged in the discussion and prompt students when required for more information or to invite them to participate.
Discussion with colleagues in other institutions
A post on the Jiscmail ALT list prompted a number of replies, including one from Rebecca Marsden at Lancaster University. She provided the following advice and guidance based on her own experience of running online journal clubs:
In response to your query to the ALT-Members email list, I run a quarterly online reading group for students in the Educational Research Department at Lancaster University. We have MA and
PhD students all over the globe which leads to lively conversations with insights from many different perspectives.I facilitate the group and a member of
academic staff joins me in this role when she can. I started the group because I found face-to-face reading groups really useful when I was startingout on myPhD and I wanted to extend this option to our students who study away from Lancaster.It’s a very informal group which discusses research journal articles on topics of interest to educational researchers. Wherever possible, we read articles suggested by students.
Attendance is rarely more than ten people which is fine as any more
than that would be problematic. I generally run each session twice tosuit the different time zones where our students live.Attendance is rarely more than ten people which is fine as any more
than that would be problematic. I generally run each session twice tosuit the different time zones where our students live.I first used WebEx, then
Vscene and now Zoom video conference software.I take notes during the meetings and write these up
afterwards . I give all participants a chance to edit them before adding the resulting notes onto a Mahara site accessible to all our students.
I asked Rebecca for more information around the sessions themselves and enquired about her reason for note taking over recording the session. Her reply is shown below:
The sessions last between 60 and 90 minutes depending partly on how quickly participants can connect. The participants always have the paper several weeks in advance of the session. Sometimes participants come along solely because of
a specific paper interests them but we also have students who come along every time to broaden their knowledge and perspectives of educational research. Since ourPhD students are producing work of publishable standard then the reading group discussions will sometimes focus on the writing and publishing process.Everyone participates by voice and video but occasionally, because of technical restrictions, students will be listening in and contributing via a chat box. Low broadband sometimes means that students have to turn off their video and participate by voice only. I think that once or twice we have had students phoning in
.
From past experience with face-to-face sessions, recording sessions can inhibit discussion hence my notetaking. It takes some time but I’m a fairly quick typist and I try to write up my notes asap after the sessions whilst I can still remember what happened! The resulting notes are a resource available to all students whether or not they attended the session.
References