An Investigation of Second-Year Medical Students’ Use of Outside Resources at Two Institutions

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Medical students have an unprecedented number of study resources available to use. There is a shift in the frequency of student resource use, particularly outside resources not provided by the academic institution, as students progress through the curriculum. This may reflect how individual students develop as self-regulated learners. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate and compare medical student resource use at two institutions. Materials and Methods This is a mixed-methods, cross-sectional study that examines factors that are associated with outside resource use and frequency of resource use for second-year medical students across two institutions. A questionnaire was sent to second-year medical students at ATSU-School of Osteopathic Medicine and Eastern Virginia Medical School. Mann–Whitney tests were used to compare Likert-type responses between institutions. A thematic analysis was used to validate and expand on the qualitative dataset. Results Students across institutions are using outside resources frequently. We observed similar influence of factors for the use of outside resources such as preparing for licensing exams across institutions. EVMS students were more likely to be influenced by academic support staff and to use outside resources to prepare for course exams than ATSU students. Differences were noted when comparing the use of specific resources such as transcripts, self-generated student resources, and online resources generated by peers. Further, EVMS students more frequently used outside resources to study for disciplines such as physiology, microbiology, and pathology compared to ATSU students. Conclusions The observation that students across both institutions are influenced similarly to use outside resources to prepare for licensing exams is expected. However, we did observe some differences which could be explained by variations in curriculum and organizational features or programs at each institution. The results from the current study are consistent with what has been observed in previous studies. Establishing a better understanding of how students use outside resources will enable faculty and institutions to help students develop as self-regulated learners.