Title
eLearning among medical undergraduates: How do Medical Students use podcasts and what are their learning needs?
Theme
3AA Mobile learning and social networks
Background
Advances in technology and increasing access to a wide variety of quality learning resources online have led to medical undergraduates study habits changing considerably in recent years. How to make most effective use of these resources remains largely unanswered.
Summary of Work
Permission was granted by the University of Glasgow for medical undergraduate’s to participate in a survey of the use of educational materials for learning. A 25-question survey was disseminated by email ascertaining basic demographic information and questions covering areas such as education materials used (and those perceived to be the most beneficial use of time), how students organise the topics they access at a given time, how often students evaluate the quality of evidence of internet resources used, time per week spent using electronic/multimedia resources and which particular electronic/multimedia resources are used by students. Results were analysed by Fishers exact test using SPSS. A p < 0.05 was taken as significant.
Summary of Results
70.5% (160/227) used medical podcasts with 50% of these users spending up to 1 hour per week viewing podcasts. Pre‐clinical students (p=0.008), auditory and visual learners (p=0.023), students with a previous degree (p=0.05), students revising for exams and those studying basic science were more likely to find that podcasts were one of the most beneficial uses of their time. Students primarily accessed podcasts by watching online via a computer (83%). 55% reported using podcasts as part of their revision before an exam whilst 40% used them as part of routine study. The ability to review materials at their own pace was the most appealing feature of podcasts. The most common reasons to not use podcasts were technical problems (52%) and lack of time (48%).
Conclusion
Use of electronic learning resources are popular amongst medical undergraduates with a significant porttion reguarly accesing podcasts although textbooks remain the most frequently used and popular resource. Use of resources changes by stage in training suggesting that students are acquiring study skills and developing their digital literacy throughout their degrees. Pre‐clinical students, students with previous degrees, auditory and visual learners, those studying basic science and revising for exams were more likely to find podcasts useful. Time and technical issues remain a barrier to their use.
Take-home Messages
Electronic learning resources are growing in popularity amongst medical undergraduates. As a result undergraduate preferences should be taken into consideration by course designers when considering when and how to introduce podcasts.
Acknowledgement
We greatly appreciate the work of Dr Boyle in creating and running a Student Selected Component (SSC) in ‘Research in Medical Education’