Blogging as a tool for the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge in health sciences: a preliminary evaluation

Tools for online collaboration are becoming increasingly prevalent in recent years. Certain characteristics of these tools encourage this proliferation: they are easy to use, always available, allow knowledge to be built collaboratively and disseminated quickly through social networks, and are usually free of charge. In this context, blogs are becoming increasingly important in the field of health as digital newspapers and magazines that support a large number of multimedia formats. The possibility to subscribe to blogs and their availability in formats adaptable to mobile devices mean their content can be taken anywhere. Although the use of blogs is well-established among Health Science professionals, their use among university professors as a component of the teaching strategies in these disciplines is much less common, and thus the benefits, risks and limitations of using blogging as a pedagogical tool are poorly understood. In this preliminary evaluation of a pedagogy, a public WordPress-based blog was developed for the Nutrition and Dietetics module of the undergraduate course in Nursing at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). This was primarily intended as way to use ICT to increase the level of student engagement and interest in learning the subject, but also as a way to introduce future health professionals to the world of blogging. This paper describes our experiences with this pedagogical project and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the use of blogs in university Health Sciences teaching. Incorporating this tool into teaching methodologies takes advantages of the theoretical possibilities it offers, which include crucial aspects such as developing critical thinking, acquiring knowledge, answering questions from students, and enabling new mechanisms to develop the skills that must be acquired. However, the challenges and inconveniences are also highlighted; these are principally the lack of motivation and the low participation of the students. By analysing the outcomes of this preliminary evaluation of a pedagogy, it is concluded that blogs are a very useful tool, although it is suggested that the literature shows a certain bias toward the publication of successful trials.