Christoph Pimmer

Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute | Swiss TPH

Despite the widespread use and advancements of mobile technology that facilitate rich communication modes, there is little evidence demonstrating the value of smartphones for effective interclinician communication and knowledge processes. The objective of this study was to determine the effects of different synchronous smartphone-based modes of com...

This study analyses the use of a group space on the social networking site Facebook as a way to facilitate research supervision for teams of learners. Borrowing Lee's (2008) framework for research supervision, the goal was to understand how supervision and learning was achieved in, and shaped by, the properties of a social networking space. For thi...

Health workers’ use of counselling information on their mobile phones for health education is a central but little understood phenomenon in numerous mobile health (mHealth) projects in Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on empirical data from an interpretative case study in the setting of the project in rural Malawi, this research investigates the ways in...

This paper critically reviews literature on the role of Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) applications, such as WhatsApp, in supporting learning and teaching practice. Using formal qualitative synthesis methodology, and dialectical theory as an analytical tool, the main objective was to identify tensions, affordances, constraints, and resolution strat...

Although Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) is a massive communication phenomenon and its educational use can be seen as a genuine form of mobile learning, it has been studied to a limited extent to date. The present study examined the use of MIM to engage young professionals in mobile learning communities during their school-to-work transition. This t...

FAQs are widely used to respond to users’ knowledge needs within knowledge domains. While LLM might be a promising way to address user questions, they are still prone to hallucinations i.e., inaccurate or wrong responses, which, can, inter alia, lead to massive problems, including, but not limited to, ethical issues. As a part of the healthcare coa...

We present an iterative and incremental approach to designing dialog management for a health coach chatbot based on our in-progress research. The requirements are derived from the coaching needs of young people living with HIV. We identify a hybrid dialog management approach to address different coaching needs as well as dialog acts to enable smoot...

This study reports on the adaptation and outcomes of a teacher professional development (TPD) programme in a rural Zimbabwean secondary school. The programme incorporated Open Educational Resources (OER), specifically OER4school materials, that were provided via tablet computers for teachers and students. A mixed-methods case study was employed to...

Background: Health practitioners across the globe are rapidly adopting social and mobile media. This adoption carries considerable risks and requires the development of new forms of digital professionalism. This study examined the use of a simple, smartphone-based tutorial which contained authentic text scenarios, reflective prompts, and questions...

BACKGROUND Health practitioners across the globe are rapidly adopting social and mobile media in their professional practices. However, this appropriation carries considerable risks and requires the development of digital professionalism. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to examine the potential of an interactive scenario-based mobile lea...

This study investigated the use of instant messaging in the school-to-work transition, a crucial stage of learning and development. Newly graduated health professionals (n = 235) participated either in WhatsApp groups in which moderators shared knowledge and facilitated professional discussions or in the control group. The results show that partici...

Learners’ cognitive abilities to assess the credibility of information in digital spaces are a relevant part of 21st century skills. Emerging evidence suggests that gamification could be a suitable approach for learners to develop these skills independently of their educational level. This study examined two popular online fake news games in a high...

Fake and false news, an unfortunate hallmark of today's information society, have serious political and societal consequences. Little systematic knowledge is available about effective learning, teaching and awareness-raising strategies that help users in addressing fake news. This study reports preliminary results from a systematic literature revie...

Internationally, transition from student to registered nurse is a challenging and stressful period. This study investigated the use of an Instant Messaging application (WhatsApp) community of practice to support graduate nurses in their first year of practice in the Western Cape, South Africa. A preliminary survey was conducted to determine the tec...

Large Interactive Displays (LIDs), such as tabletops or interactive walls, are promising innovations, which are increasingly used to support colocated collaboration. Yet the current evidence base on the impact of LID use on collaborative processes and outcomes, and associated influencing factors, is fragmented, particularly in comparison with other...

Health professionals are increasingly adopting social and networked media. While a prior review has identified significant benefits for their use in health communication (1), social media use carries considerable risks and require professionals to develop digital literacy. General approaches to digital and media literacy fall short of comprehensive...

Background: The student-to-nurse graduate transition is a pivotal phase in the professional development of nurses. In South Africa, this transition is part of a compulsory community service programme, which requires newly graduated nurses to work in rural and/or underserved areas for a period of 1 year. Objectives: The aim of this study was to rev...

Educating citizens about renewable energy and sustainable food systems is a global trend and the use of videos herein is a key component. Very little is known, however, regarding whether, and if so, how participatory videos can be leveraged in extremely rural areas involving villagers with very low levels of literacy and formal education. This gap...

Background: Transitioning from study to practice is a challenging phase of professional development. This research examined the affordances of leveraging moderated WhatsApp groups to support nurse graduates in this transition. Approach and Methods: Study participants, newly graduated nurses (n=72) from South Africa, were assigned to two WhatsApp g...

Background: Nurse graduates' transition into the world of work is a very challenging phase of professional development. This research examined the affordances of using moderated WhatsApp groups to support nurse graduates in this phase. Approach and methods: Study participants, newly graduated nurses (n = 72) from South Africa, were assigned to t...

Background and rationale: In times of socio-technological transformation, digital media hold the promise to better connect learning across schools and workplaces. Most of the research has focused on the use of digital platforms within education programmes and has paid limited attention to school-to-work trajectories. In particular, very little is k...

In the field of global health, social media and especially WhatsApp are very popular. Many health workers use these tools for a variety of professional and educational purposes. Findings from a research project in Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia show that the systematic use of moderated WhatsApp groups amounts to an increase in clinical knowledge...

In organisations marked by very high levels of mobility of resources and tools, the implementation of a mobile knowledge management (MKM) system might generate significant benefits in otherwise challenging knowledge-sharing environments. To explore potentialities and constraints of an MKM system based on tablets and smartphones in highly distribute...

Despite the proliferation of Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) platforms, such as WhatsApp, studies that examine their role for learning and knowledge sharing are still rare. Using the context of global health, this study seeks to examine the ways in which MIM platforms are being used for learning and knowledge sharing and identify associated potentia...

The "disconnect" between the body of knowledge acquired in classroom settings and the application of this knowledge in clinical practice is one of the main reasons for professional fear, anxiety and feelings of incompetence among freshly graduated nurses. While the phenomenon of the theory-to-practice gap has been researched quite extensively in hi...

Aim To determine the feasibility of using the Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) platform, WhatsApp, to provide supervision and support for student nurse tutors during a teaching practice placement in Nigeria. Methods A descriptive qualitative method was used to design and evaluate a six-week WhatsApp group discussion intervention among 19 student nurs...

Although learning in clinical settings is a key element of nursing education, for many learners these are challenging developmental contexts often marked by isolation and a lack of belongingness. Despite the massive appropriation of mobile instant messaging (MIM) platforms and the connective properties attendant to them, very little is known about...

Abstract Background: Social media is not only an emerging and cultural trend, but a method of communication that is changing the way individuals and organizations throughout the world transmit and receive information. Nurses play a significant role in identification, interpretation, and transmission of knowledge and information within the health ca...

Awareness raising and education regarding the use and application of renewable energy systems is a key issue in many development projects. The goal of this practice-based research was to explore the potentialities of locally developed instructional videos on tablet PCs to create awareness about renewable energy systems and to train mostly illiterat...

Background: Mobile instant messaging (MIM) tools, such as WhatsApp, have transformed global communication practice. In the field of global health, MIM is an increasingly used, but little understood, phenomenon. Objectives: It remains unclear how MIM can be used by rural community health workers (CHWs) and their facilitators, and what are the associ...

While the ubiquity and usage of Mobile Instant Messaging (MIM) applications such as WhatsApp has recordedunprecedented growth, their role for teaching and learning remains unclear. To address this gap, this papersystematically reviews empirical studies by examining the educational effects, designs, tools and settings ofMIM. For this purpose the dat...

Full Text available at: http://www.christoph.pimmer.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/Mobile-Learning-in-higher-education-Review.pdf Mobile and ubiquitous learning are increasingly attracting academic and public interest, especially in relation to their application in higher education settings. The systematic analysis of 36 empirical papers support...

This exploratory study investigates how a typically disadvantaged user group of older, female learners from rural, low-tech settings used and perceived a Facebook group as a research supervision and distance learning tool over time. The within-stage mixed-model research was carried out in a module of a part-time, advanced midwifery education course...

This paper examines digital and mobile learning that goes beyond bounded communities and closed domains. While recent work from the field of mobile learning has emphasised the importance of learning across "contexts", little analytical attention has been paid to the underlying dynamics of this phenomenon. To illuminate this, the four learning mecha...

Mhealth; instant messaging; social media; community health workers; Malawi; preliminary report;

The increasing convergence of mobile and social media is highly transformational because it is shifting the dominant form of digital communication from bilateral towards mobile and networked communication among distributed interactants. This paper explores the affordances and constraints of this dynamic for global health in low and middle income co...

Background: Empirical studies show the value of mobile phones as effective educational tools to support learning in the nursing profession, predominantly in high income countries. Problem statement: The rapidly increasing prevalence of mobile phone technology in Africa nourishes hopes that these tools could be equally effective in lowly resourced c...

This paper investigates the affordances offered by the increasing convergence of mobile and social media to connect work-based and school-related learning practices. To understand the meaning of these developments for apprenticeship education in the Global South, a small-scale study that followed the principles of design-based research was conducte...

Background With the proliferation of portable digital technology, mobile learning is becoming increasingly popular in nursing education and practice. Most of the research in this field has been concentrated on small-scale projects in high income countries. Very little is known about the ways in which nurses and midwives use mobile technology in re...

The use of mobile phones is attracting considerable interest in the fields of professional learning and work-based education. Surprisingly, there is relatively little systematic knowledge about how mobile devices can be used effectively for learning and competence development in work contexts. Many of the current approaches tend to repackage e-lear...

This teaching case describes how SAP, a leading global information technology (IT) solutions provider, embarked on a large-scale transformation program to implement a dual sustainability strategy of: (a) internally transforming the organization, and (b) addressing a business opportunity by developing IT solutions that enable their customers to beco...

Extended Abstract Background and Rationale This paper outlines the findings of a research project intended to facilitate the learning of health professionals across work-based and formal learning contexts by means of mobile technology. The focus of the educational approach was on the use of digital mobile media, and particularly mobile networking...

In medicine, knowledge is embodied and socially, temporally, spatially, and culturally distributed between actors and their environment. In addition, clinicians increasingly are using technology in their daily work to gain and share knowledge. Despite these characteristics, surprisingly few studies have incorporated the theory of distributed cognit...

Medical Education 2013: 47: 463–475 CONTEXT Some studies have explored the role of learning context in clerkships and in clinical teams. Very little is known, however, about the relationship between context and competence development in more loosely framed, day-to-day practices such as doctor–doctor consultations, although such interactions are fre...

In the medical profession much knowledge is embodied as well as socially, temporally and culturally distributed and clinical workplaces are characterized by intensive use of technological instruments. Viewed from this perspective, surprisingly little use has been made of the theory of distributed cognition (DCog), which places centrality on how cog...

Untersuchungsgegenstand der explorativen qualitativen Studien war Lernen und Kompetenzentwicklung von medizinischen und klinischen Akteuren, d.h. von Medizinstudierenden, Assistenzärzten als auch Ober- und Fachärzten. Auf Basis umfangreicher Forschungsarbeiten, die mit semistrukturierten Einzelinterviews, Fokusgruppen, Dokumentanalysen, teilnehmend...

Today’s healthcare can be characterised by the increasing importance of specialisation that requires cooperation across disciplines and specialities. In view of the number of educational programmes for interdisciplinary cooperation, surprisingly little is known on how learning arises from interdisciplinary work. In order to analyse the learning and...

Background: The achievement of the millennium development goals may be facilitated by the use of information and communication technology in medical and health education. Aims: This study intended to explore the use and impact of educational technology in medical education in resource-constrained environments. Methods: A multiple case study wa...

Mobile devices are increasingly being used to support learning in work contexts. In exploring the emerging field of work-based mobile learning (WBML), researchers need to give consideration to the theoretical and empirical findings from mobile and work-based learning. In this paper, the authors provide an overview of key issues and dominant debates...

This exploratory research investigates how students and professionals use social network sites ( SNSs ) in the setting of developing and emerging countries. Data collection included focus groups consisting of medical students and faculty as well as the analysis of a Facebook site centred on medical and clinical topics. The findings show how users,...

Mobile devices are increasingly being used to support learning in work contexts. In exploring the emerging field of work-based mobile learning (WBML), researchers need to give consideration to the theoretical and empirical findings from mobile and work-based learning. In this paper, the authors provide an overview of key issues and dominant debates...

Im Rahmen der vorliegenden Studie sind drei innovative, Netbook-gestützte Pilotprojekte mit Lernenden aus Kindergarten, Primarschule und einer Kleinklasse realisiert und systematisch untersucht worden. Schulkinder haben die Mobilgeräte u. a. zu Recherchen in einer Projektwoche zur Erarbeitung einer Zeitung sowie zur Umsetzung der Methode «Lernen du...

Das Verständnis von Weiterbildung hat sich mit der Bedeutungszunahme des informellen Lernens ausgeweitet. Weiterbildung findet nicht mehr nur in Kursen statt, sondern auch in der Arbeit und der Freizeit, mit und ohne digitale Medien. Zeitliche und räumliche Grenzen der Weiterbildung werden damit zunehmend aufgehoben. Mit diesem Verständnis von Weit...

This chapter provides a brief introduction to work-based mobile learning as well as an overview of the various chapters in the book which it introduces. Beyond the key messages of the individual contributions, the chapter also briefly discuss themes that emerge across the different chapters on work-based mobile learning.

This translated article is used by courtesy of „OrganisationsEntwicklung – Zeitschrift für Unternehmensentwicklung und Change Management“ (ZOE Nr. 1/2011).

Mobile devices are increasingly being used to support learning in work contexts. In exploring the emerging field of work-based mobile learning (WBML), researchers need — at least — to give consideration to the theoretical and empirical findings from mobile and work-based learning. In this paper we provide an overview of key issues and dominant deba...

SchwErpunkt: humankapital bEwErtEn Wissenschaft und Praxis haben ge-zeigt, dass durch Investitionen in Aus-und Weiterbildung Mehrwert in Unternehmen geschaffen werden kann. Im Unternehmensalltag erweist es sich aber als schwierig, die durch ei-ne Bildungsmaßnahme erzeugte Wir-kung zu messen. Einerseits können monetäre Controls wichtige Ausbil-dungs...

Individuals, organizations, and governments are increasingly becoming aware of the necessity of sustainability in living, organizing, performing, and managing work. In this context, “green IS” has become an established colloquial term, acknowledging that information technology, corporate information systems, and the surrounding practices are both a...

Mobile appliances such as the iPhone were identified by the 2009 Horizon Report as the key technologies that will, in all probability, make their entrance into educational organisations within the next year. The use of mobile technologies in further training provision that is closely associated with companies is, by contrast (still) significantly m...