Smart phones, broad band internet, digital educational resources and medical students
Şenol EMRE1
, Elif ALTINAY KIRLI3, Masis MALHASYAN2, İzzet ALTUN2, Sinan CELAYİR1
1İstanbul Üniversitesi Cerrahpaşa Tıp Fakültesi Çocuk Cerrahisi Anabilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye
2İstanbul Üniversitesi Cerrahpaşa Tıp Fakültesi, İstanbul, Türkiye
3İstanbul Üniversitesi Cerrahpaşa Tıp Fakültesi Çocuk Cerrahisi Anabilim Dalı Çocuk Ürolojisi Bilim Dalı, İstanbul, Türkiye
Keywords: Broad band internet, medical students, educati- on, smart phones
Abstract
Aim: To investigate the usage conditions of smart phones, broad band internet, social networks, cloud services, instant messaging applications and digital educational resources by medical students.
Material and Methods: With use of a questionary form, usage habits for smart phones, broad band internet, social networks, cloud services, instant messaging applications and digital educational resources, advantages and disadvantages and their suggestions on these subjects were investigated for second and fifth year of Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty Turkish and English program students.
Results: Three hundred and two students participated in the study. One hundred and twenty nine of the participants were second year (43 English, 86 Turkish), and 193 (61 English, 112 Turkish) were fifth year students. All students except one were using smart phones routinely. While smart phones were mostly preferred for internet surfing (295/302), followed by laptop computers (191/302), tablets (80/302) and desktop computers (20/302). Only 19 students (6%) declared that they were not using social media. Seventy-seven students (25%) had not ever used digital resources such as Pubmed, Medscape, Uptodate, Google Scholar etc. Namely 41% (39% English, 44% Turkish) of 2., and 14% (7% English, 18% Turkish) of 5. grade students had not used these digital resources. Despite the students reported that they had found web-based educational resources significant (49%) and highly significant (39%), only 63 (21%) students were using online resources on a daily basis.
Conclusion: Smart phones were widely used among medical students. Medical students preferred mobile equipments (smart phone, and tablet) for internet access when compared with personal computers. Students were using social media prevalently. Fifth grade students were using online educational resources more frequently than second year students Despite the students declared that they had placed importance on web-based education, they preferred them less in daily practice, when compared with the conventional resources (printed books, lecture notes).