Professional social networks can be effectively utilized to obtaining valuable stakeholder curricular engagement, but continuous monitoring and frequent prompting are necessary to ensure full participation.

At institutions utilizing a distributed educational model, face-to-face engagement with key stakeholders is a challenge.  This study explored the feasibility of using a social media platform designed for professional networking (LinkedIn) as a way for conducting asynchronous focus groups; thus, facilitating and enhancing distant faculty engagement in curricular relevant issues and decisions.

Population:  Preceptors involved in clinical teaching of students in their 3^rd or 4^th year of veterinary curricula were asked to participate in a focus group to explore topics for preceptor professional development.  Participants were not asked a preference for online or face-to-face focus groups.  For the LinkedIn groups, participants were asked to create a LinkedIn profile if they did not already have one.  One moderator was the primary moderator in each group allowing the other to observe the interactions.  One group (n=5) participated in the 2-hour, face-to-face facilitated focus group.  Two groups (n=8, 6) participated in an asynchronous facilitated focus groups on LinkedIn.

Interview Questions:  Semi-structured interview questions were employed in both face-to-face and online focus groups.  These questions focused on experiences, thoughts, and impressions regarding student teaching in non-academic clinical settings and what professional development opportunities are needed for a veterinarian’s career growth and development.  Questions were designed to align with Boyer’s four areas of Scholarship (Application, Discovery, Integration, and Teaching). If needed, questions were reworded from the face-to-face format to the social media platform to incorporate the less conversational nature of the online format.  However, the focus of the question did not change between formats.

Face-to-Face Format:  Preceptors attended a 2-hour session on campus, which included a complementary lunch.  Two session moderators were from the university Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness.  The session was recorded for transcription and review by authors.

Social Media Platform:  LinkedIn was chosen over other social media platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, etc.) because of the professional networking aspect of the site.  The investigators were interested in a format that would promote the professional nature of the participants and minimize the need for adjustments to security settings to provide confidentiality of the group.  The LinkedIn groups were private groups open only to the participants and two moderators.

Procedure for Social Media Platform:  Questions were posted one at a time with asynchronous participation from preceptors.  Once conversation on a particular topic appeared to be complete (no new participation, even after moderator prompting), the next question was posted.  Initial plans for posting were to allow for 2-3 days of conversation before posting of new questions.  This method was chosen by the investigators to ensure that each question was explored fully and not skipped over in favor of another, more palatable or appealing question.

Data Analysis:  Deductive thematic coding was performed on all focus group transcripts by the three authors using Boyer’s four areas of scholarship as the theoretical framework (Scholarship of Application, Integration, Discovery, and Teaching). Inductive coding was used to capture non-framework themes.  Inter-rater agreement of individual coders across twenty-three parent and child nodes in the three focus groups was determined by kappa statistic in NVivo.  Correlation of parent and child nodes across the three focus groups was determined by the Jaccard similarity coefficient in NVivo (web graphic for teaching alignment across three groups).