Undergraduate medical students’ perspectives of skills, uses and preferences of information technology in medical education: A cross-sectional study in a Saudi Medical College

Abstract

Background: Information technology (IT) is widely used in medical education. However, there are not enough studies about IT uses and preferences among traditional and problem-based learning (PBL) medical students.Aim: To compare IT skills, uses and preferences for education between traditional and PBL medical students’.Method: A cross-sectional study; a modified Educause Center for Analysis and Research online survey was sent to traditional curriculum 5th and PBL 4th year medical students of King Saud University.Results: Most of the responding 176 students prefer mobile devices and moderate amount of IT in education. Fourth and fifth year students perceived high academic value of Google (94.2 vs. 86.7%, p = 0.34), YouTube (90.7 vs. 92.2%, p = 0.83) and PubMed (83.7 vs. 86.7%, p = 0.06). More 4th year than 5th year students rated themselves as skilled in learning management system (54.7 vs. 21.1%, p = 0.0001) and Smartboard use (40.7 vs. 23.3%, p = 0.04). Most students rated faculty IT skills as effective. Students agreed that technology helps working faster (95.5%) and make learning creative (85.9%).Conclusions: More integration of information literacy and IT training in medical curricula is needed to enhance better utilization of full features of IT resources available for learning and problem solving. National multi-institutional studies are recommended.