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. 2021 Apr 9:8:23742895211006829.
doi: 10.1177/23742895211006829. eCollection 2021 Jan-Dec.

The Implementation and Effectiveness of PathElective.com

Cullen M Lilley  1 , Christina A Arnold  2 , Michael Arnold  2   3 , Adam L Booth  4 , Jerad M Gardner  5 , Xiaoyin Sara Jiang  6 , Sanam Loghavi  7 , Kamran M Mirza  1   8
Affiliations

The Implementation and Effectiveness of PathElective.com

Cullen M Lilley et al. Acad Pathol. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic put most in-person pathology electives on-hold as departments adapted to changes in education and patient care. To address the subsequent void in pathology education, we created a free, virtual, modular, and high-quality pathology elective website. Website traffic from June 1, 2020, to October 1, 2020, was monitored using the built-in analyses on Squarespace. Twitter engagement was analyzed using Twitter analytics and the Symplur Social Graph Score. A voluntary satisfaction survey was sent to all PathElective users and results were analyzed. During this time, the site saw 25 467 unique visitors, over 34 988 visits, 181 302 page views, and 4449 subscriptions from 99 countries. Countries with the highest traffic are the United States (14 682), India (5210), and the Philippines (2195). PathElective's Twitter social graph score increased from 63.59 to 89.3 with the addition of 1637 followers. Data from surveyed users (n = 177) show most to be pathology residents (41%). Most subscribers (89%) are committed to a career in pathology. The majority heard of the website via Twitter (55%). Almost half of those surveyed engaged with the PathTwitter community on Twitter and of those who participated, 99% found that interaction useful. In all survey questions surrounding satisfaction and usefulness, a large majority of the users were either satisfied or very satisfied. PathElective is a novel pathology elective that offers a unique opportunity to educate medical students and residents from around the globe and demonstrates high effectiveness and satisfaction among users.

Keywords: medical education; pathology; pathology education; social media; virtual medical education.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Geographic distribution of PathElective visitors. Heat map analysis of the number of users based on geographic location across the world (A). All continents revealed visits, except Antarctica (not shown). Within the United States (B), the states from which most visitors came included California, Texas, Illinois, and New York. India revealed the second highest number of visitors (after the United States), with most visits originating from the state of Tamil Nadu (C).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Website traffic and user behavior. Traffic sources ranged from referral to direct website entry (A) that led to the home page being most visited (B). Most users were on desktop devices (C) and entered the site as a result of direct website access (D).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Social media and search performance. Social media performance surrounding the site launch revealed mirroring of Twitter impressions and engagement (A). Twitter activity varied during this time frame, with highest activity surrounding launch time (B). The site’s social media influence over time reveals an incremental increase in Symplur Healthcare Social Graph Score (C) with prominent bursts in early June and early July that correspond with Loyola University Chicago SSOM beta testing start date (red arrow) and the PathElective public release date (blue arrow). An analysis of Google search metrics reveals a reasonably consistent clickthrough rate for the top 6 search terms presented (D).
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Survey demographics and course engagement. Summary of survey results including demographics (A-C) and course engagement (D-G).
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Response to satisfaction survey. Overall satisfaction metrics. These data are based on Likert scale responses from participants with 1 to 5 representing very unsatisfied, unsatisfied, neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, satisfied, and very satisfied, respectively (A-C), or strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree, agree and strongly agree, respectively (D-G).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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