Technologies of Exposure: Videoconferenced Distributed Medical Education as a Sociomaterial Practice
Date
2018-11-21
Authors
MacLeod, Anna
Cameron, Paula
Kits, Olga
Tummons, Jonathan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Association of American Medical Colleges
Abstract
Purpose
Videoconferencing—a network of buttons, screens, microphones, cameras, and speakers—is one way to ensure that undergraduate medical curricula are comparably delivered across distributed medical education (DME) sites, a common requirement for accreditation. However, few researchers have critically explored the role of videoconference technologies in day-to-day DME. The authors, therefore, conducted a three-year ethnographic study of a Canadian undergraduate DME program.
Method
Drawing on 108 hours of observations, 33 interviews, and analysis of 65 documents—all collected at two campuses between January 2013 and February 2015—the authors explored the question, “What is revealed when we consider videoconferencing for DME as a sociomaterial practice?”
Results
The authors describe three interconnected ways that videoconference systems operate as unintended “technologies of exposure”: visual, curricular, and auditory. Videoconferencing inadvertently exposes both mundane and extraordinary images and sounds, offering access to the informal, unintended, and even disavowed curriculum of everyday medical education. The authors conceptualize these exposures as sociomaterial practices, which add an additional layer of complexity for members of medical school communities.
Conclusions
This analysis challenges the assumption that videoconferencing merely extends the bricks-and-mortar classroom. The authors discuss practical implications and recommend more critical consideration of the ways videoconferencing shifts the terrain of medical education. These findings point to a need for more critically oriented research exploring the ways DME technologies transform medical education, in both intended and unintended ways.
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Citation
MacLeod, A., Cameron, P., Kits, O., & Tummons, J. (2019). Technologies of exposure: Videoconferenced distributed medical education as a sociomaterial practice. Academic Medicine, 94(3), 412-418.