Learning relationships in community-based service-learning: a social network analysis

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the social learning of students within community-based clinical placements and ways in which it can be supported. In an allied health service-learning program, we analysed students’ learning relationships to quantify what, and from whom students learnt. METHODS: We conducted a social learning network survey in four domains of learning (clinical knowledge, procedural skills, professional development, and complex determinants of health) to explore learning relationships (ties) with other people (alters) that students (egos) formed during their placement. We quantified how different roles (supervisors, health professionals, administrators, peers, schoolteachers, and clients) contributed to the students’ learning in each of the four domains. We used exponential random graph models (ERGMs) to test which relational processes contributed to the structure of the observed learning networks. RESULTS: Data was available from a complete cohort of 10 students on placement in a network of 69 members, thus providing information on 680 potential learning relations. Students engaged in similar ways in the domains of clinical knowledge, procedural skills, and professional development. Learning relations with academic supervisors were significantly more likely. Also students reported reciprocal learning relations with peers – i.e. they formed learning pairs. This effect was absent in learning networks about complex determinants of health (including socio-economic and cultural factors). Instead, local administrative staff were significantly more often the source of learning about the local contextual factors. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding the structure of student learning networks through social network analysis helps identify targeted strategies to enhance learning in community-based service-learning programs. Our findings suggest students recognised important learning from each other and from administrative personnel that is unrelated to the content of their placement. Based on this insight clinical educators could prepare students to become agentic learners, learning with each other and from sources outside their program. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12909-019-1522-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.