Virtual forums and knowledge building among health professionals

Abstract

E-learning modality has become a method which has allowed health professionals to update their knowledge. It is a teaching strategy which facilitates the collaborative knowledge building among those participating in the discussion forums.
Objective: To describe collaborative knowledge building among health professionals in learning virtual communities who participate in courses of the Continuous Education Program of the Nursing School of the Catholic University of Chile in 2014.
Method: This is a quantitative, descriptive, and qualitative study with content analysis following the guidelines of Earl Babbie and based on the Gunawardena model.
Results: Knowledge building takes place, mainly, in stages I and II of the Gunawardena model.
Conclusion: While these forums allow the building of collaborative knowledge in some specific areas, as it was reported in other studies, this knowledge only reaches the first stages of the Gunawardena model, which means that there is information sharing, and arguments are agreed or disagreed, but there is no further learning; in other words, the proposed group’s ideas contrast the discussions around personal experiences or existing knowledge, however, the new built knowledge is not applied.