Bloom’s Taxonomy of Twitter: Higher Order Thinking and the Twitter Journal Club

Objectives Social media has emerged as a powerful platform for engagement and learning. There is a growing trend towards the use of social media amongst healthcare professionals and professional groups to disseminate and discuss knowledge. Twitter is one tool that may enhance continuing professional development (CPD) for the medical radiation technologist. To evaluate the potential benefits of Twitter to CPD amongst medical radiation technologists, this study explored the integration of Bloom’s taxonomy with Twitter based professional activities.

Methods In 2015, the Medical Radiation Journal Club (https://medradjclub.wordpress.com/) commenced a monthly Twitter-based journal club for medical radiation professionals. This study investigates the application of Bloom’s taxonomy of the Twitter based journal club for CPD purposes.

Results The Twitter based journal club provides a valuable platform for CPD. The combination of journal articles, supplementary reading, online blog and the one hour Twitter discussion engages all levels of Bloom’s taxonomy; remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create. A deeper insight revealed that the Twitter journal club provides an authentic learning environment suitable for CPD in which participants consume, collaborate and produce.

Conclusions This evaluation demonstrated that the Twitter journal club can provide an authentic learning environment with all the cognitive dimensions afforded in a formal classroom or face to face journal club. Indeed, in some ways these cognitive dimensions are enhanced in the Twittersphere.