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Electronic educational (e-learning) technology usage continues to grow. Many medical journals operate companion blogs (an application of e-learning technology) that enable rapid dissemination of scientific knowledge and discourse. Faculty members participating in promotion and tenure academic tracks spend valuable time and effort contributing, editing, and directing these medical journal blogs.
We sought to understand whether chairs of medicine and pediatric departments acknowledge blog authorship as academic achievement.
The authors surveyed 267 chairs of US and Canadian medicine and pediatric departments regarding their attitudes toward the role of faculty participation in e-learning and blogging in the promotion and tenure process. The survey completion rate was 22.8% (61/267).
A majority of respondents (87%, 53/61) viewed educational scholarship as either important or very important for promotion. However, only 23% (14/61) perceived importance to faculty effort in producing content for journal-based blogs. If faculty were to participate in blog authorship, 72% (44/61) of surveyed chairs favored involvement in a journal-based versus a society-based or a personal (nonaffiliated) blog. We identified a “favorable group” of chairs (19/59, 32%), who rated leadership roles in e-learning tools as important or very important, and an “unfavorable group” of chairs (40/59, 68%), who rated leadership roles in e-learning tools as somewhat important or not important. The favorable group were more likely to be aware of faculty bloggers within their departments (58%, 11/19 vs 25%, 10/40), viewed serving on editorial boards of e-learning tools more favorably (79%, 15/19 vs 31%, 12/39), and were more likely to value effort spent contributing to journal-based blogs (53%, 10/19 vs 10%, 4/40).
Our findings demonstrate that although the majority of department chairs value educational scholarship, only a minority perceive value in faculty blogging effort.
Widespread adoption of electronic educational (e-learning) technology has fundamentally changed how information is shared and discussed in learning and teaching environments [
Scholarly communication is shifting toward Internet-based media [
We sought to understand whether faculty participation in blogs is acknowledged as academic achievement. Academic blogging can take several forms. In this survey, we focused on participation in medical journal, medical society, and personal (independently authored) blogs. We surveyed all chairs of medicine and pediatric departments in the United States and Canada about their attitudes toward blogging with respect to promotion and tenure. We chose department chairs, as opposed to promotion and tenure committee members, because we believe chairs define the culture for scholarship and promotion within their departments. We hypothesized that chairs who strongly value leadership in e-learning tools would have a favorable attitude toward faculty blogging efforts and recognize these activities as scholarship for the purpose of promotion and tenure.
We invited all chairs of medicine and pediatrics at academic and community-based programs in the United States and Canada to participate in this survey (
A research management team at Duke University reviewed the survey to refine the content. Study data were collected and managed using Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) electronic data capture tools hosted at Duke University [
Respondents that rated the question “How important is a leadership role as a medical director for an e-learning tool, such as editing a journal-based blog” as important or very important were termed the “favorable group” and the respondents that rated the question as somewhat important or not important were termed the “unfavorable group.”
Analysis was performed to compare the two groups. Items with no response were excluded from analysis. Fisher exact test (two-sided alpha=.05) was used to assess the significance of association between categorical variables.
In total, 61 (22.8%) respondents completed the survey from a total of 267 distributed. There was no significant difference in response rate between chairs of public versus private institutions (38/155, 24.5% vs 23/112, 20.5%;
Demographics of respondents (N=61).
Demographic | n (%) | |
Gender (male) | 49 (80) | |
Medicine | 27/60 (45) | |
Pediatrics | 33/60 (55) | |
No response | 1 (2) | |
56 (92) | ||
Medicine | 24/56 (43) | |
Pediatrics | 31/56 (55) | |
No response | 1/56 (2) | |
Public | 38 (62) | |
Private | 23 (38) |
State/province of respondents. State/province (n): Alabama (2), Alberta (1), Arkansas (1), California (1), Colorado (1), Florida (1), Georgia (1), Hawaii (2), Illinois (1), Indiana (2), Maryland (2), Massachusetts (3), Minnesota (1), Missouri (1), Nebraska (2), Nevada (1), New York (4), North Carolina (2), Ohio (6), Oklahoma (1), Ontario (2), Oregon (2), Pennsylvania (1), Saskatchewan (1), South Carolina (2), South Dakota (2), Tennessee (1), Texas (6), Vermont (1), Virginia (4), West Virginia (1), Wisconsin (2), all other states/provinces had zero respondents.
A total of 87% (53/61) of respondents viewed educational scholarship as either important or very important for promotion (
In all, 34% (21/61) of respondents were aware of faculty within their departments that were involved in contributing to a journal-based blog and 43% (26/60) designated a specific area in the promotion and tenure application for reporting participation in journal-based blogs or e-learning tools. Although the majority (49/58, 84%) felt that journal-based blogs disseminate medical knowledge, only 25% (14/56) believed that most journal-based blogs were peer reviewed by editors.
Among respondents who rated leadership roles in e-learning tools (eg, directorship of a journal-based blog) as important or very important (the favorable group; n=19/59, 32%), as compared to somewhat important or not important (the unfavorable group; n=40/59, 68%), there was no significant difference in gender or the presence of a clinician-educator track. There was a trend toward a more favorable attitude by medicine chairs versus pediatric chairs (12/19, 63% vs 14/39, 36%;
Comparison of attitudes categorized by favorable versus unfavorable chairs.
Characteristic | Overall response, |
Favorable group,b |
Unfavorable group,c |
|
Male | 47 (80) | 14 (74) | 33 (83) | .50 |
Medicine department | 26/58 (45) | 12 (63) | 14/39 (36) | .09 |
Have a clinician-educator pathway | 54 (92) | 19 (100) | 35 (88) | .17 |
Educational scholarship important or very important for promotion | 52 (88) | 18 (95) | 34 (85) | .41 |
Serving on editorial boards of e-learning tools important or very important | 27/58 (47) | 15 (79) | 12/39 (31) | <.001 |
Aware of faculty bloggers in department | 21 (36) | 11 (58) | 10 (25) | .02 |
Promotion and tenure form has field for blogging and e-learning | 26/58 (45) | 9 (47) | 17/39 (44) | >.99 |
Effort contributing to a journal-based blog important or very important | 14 (24) | 10 (53) | 4 (10) | <.001 |
Believe most journal-based blogs are peer reviewed | 13/55 (24) | 6/18 (33) | 7/37 (19) | .31 |
Believe journal-based blogs disseminate knowledge | 48/57 (84) | 17 (89) | 31/38 (82) | .70 |
Prefer contributions to journal blogs | 43 (73) | 13 (68) | 30 (75) | .76 |
Prefer contribution to society blogs | 22 (37) | 10 (53) | 12 (30) | .15 |
Prefer contribution to personal blogs | 1 (2) | 0 (0) | 1 (3) | >.99 |
a Respondents who failed to answer e-learning leadership question were removed from analysis. Likewise, respondents who answered leadership but did not answer question as outlined on the rows were not included in analysis.
b E-learning leadership considered very important/important.
c E-learning leadership considered somewhat important/not important.
Questionnaire items addressing importance of educational scholarship, leadership in e-learning tools, and valuation of blogging effort.
If your faculty member is involved in contributing to an academic blog, which would you value most?
In our survey of chairs of medicine and pediatric departments in the United States and Canada, we found that the vast majority valued participation in educational scholarship for promotion in tenure. However, it appears that participation in e-learning activities, as director, board member, or contributor of a blog, was generally viewed less favorably than other traditional publication activities. If faculty chose to participate in blogging, we found that a majority of chairs of medicine and pediatric departments preferred that they do so with journal-based blogs as compared to society and independent personal blogs.
This survey showed that chairs who thought e-learning leadership was very important or important to promotion and tenure (the favorable group) were more likely to be aware of a faculty member engaged in medical blogging, as compared to chairs who indicated that e-learning leadership role was somewhat important or not important (unfavorable group). The favorable group was also more likely to value e-learning for promotion and tenure, faculty service to an editorial board of an e-learning app, and contributions to journal-based blog. The attitudes of the favorable group are similar to a survey of US medical school promotion and tenure committee chairs on attitudes toward e-learning as scholarly activity. A vast majority (76%) recognized e-learning as a meaningful contribution to scholarship and valued output that changed learner outcome [
Blogging has emerged as a new medium to disseminate scientific findings, spark academic dialog, and complement existing postpublication peer-review mechanisms (eg, journal editorials or letters to the editor). Online resources geared toward critical appraisal of scientific and medical literature have proliferated in the last 5 to 10 years [
This survey has several limitations. The relatively low response rate (22.8%, 61/267) of surveyed chairs may not be representative of the entire group’s attitudes toward e-learning. It is possible that polarization of attitudes among respondents led to sampling bias. We did not ask chairs to evaluate e-learning and blogging participation against specific comparators, such as research grants or publication in peer-reviewed journals. In addition, respondents’ understanding of personal (unaffiliated) medical blogs may have been conflated with nonmedical “hobby” blogs. It is also possible that opinions of department chairs, as opposed to promotion and committee member chairs, are not representative of what is ultimately deemed acceptable scholarly output. However, as previously stated, we intentionally targeted department chairs because we believe they are aware of the scholarly activities their faculty members engage in and help determine the relative importance of such activities. Additionally, we chose to dichotomize the survey respondents as favorable and unfavorable based on their answer to one question (“How important is a leadership role as a medical director for an e-learning tool, such as editing a journal-based blog?”). Conceptual similarities between this question and the other questions could have led to results that are endogenous to our classification.
The findings from our survey indicate that, although academic chairs hold positive views toward educational scholarship, participation by faculty in academic blogs is regarded lukewarmly. Encouragingly for faculty bloggers, chairs that did favorably view e-learning educational output by faculty were indeed more aware of faculty members’ blog involvement. Therefore, it is possible that raising awareness about the rigor and reach of e-learning, particularly in regards to journal-based blogs, could lead to greater recognition of e-learning participation in the promotion and tenure process. As more medical societies and journals develop e-learning programs that shift discourse to the digital space, academic institutions, department chairs, and promotion and tenure committees should recognize faculty that contribute significant scholarship through these media.
Survey participation letter.
MAS is funded by Career Development Award IK2BX002240 from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Research and Development, Biomedical Laboratory Research and Development Service. CBC is funded by Duke Training Grant in Nephrology (NIH 5T32DK007731).
KDJ serves as the blog editor for the