Web-Based Educational Resources for Indian Medical Graduates

Abstract

Background: Nowadays, students have a vast knowledge of multimedia. Social media is an online platform that allows community building through collaboration. Objectives: The present study aimed to understand the use of web-based resources for educational purposes by medical students. Methods: This cross-sectional survey was conducted for three months on the students, interns, and residents of a tertiary care hospital and Government Medical College, Surat, India. Informed consent was taken from the participants, and a pre-approved questionnaire was delivered to all of them for data collection. The data were entered using the Google spreadsheet and were expressed using descriptive statistics. Results: Out of the study population consisting of 900 individuals, 646 filled the questionnaires and were finally evaluated. Out of 646, 430 individuals were medical students, 335 were female, and 303 were male. The majority (91.9%) of the responders were exposed to computer education in their schools. We found that 549 (86.4%) people were aware of the free internet access provided to them in the college library. Almost 97% (617) of the responders had mobile phones with internet access, and 80.1% connected to the internet more than once a day. The results of this study showed that 94.4% of the participants accepted that they used internet-based media to enhance their academic knowledge, while 66.5% agreed that internet resources are giving much unreliable information. Moreover, 55.8% of the responders were associated with the academic e-learning groups. Only 55 (8.7%) respondents had received formal training for online literature search. Conclusions: The emergence of various social media applications and web-based resources provides us with more collaborative approaches to medical education. However, implementing new technologies also creates new challenges and opportunities for students and faculties. Training concerning internet search and web-based resources is important to enhance their e-learning skills.