Internet and Computer Use by Medical Students in Traditional and Problem Based Learning Systems

INTRODUCTION The use of computers and the Internet has dramatically revolutionized the ease with which information can be accessed. In medical education, there have been several attempts to use the Internet in diverse ways, including teaching, delivery of educational materials, as a source of materials for research and for the conduct of examinations[1-6]. The medical field is dynamic with new discoveries, diagnostic methods and management protocols constantly emerging. Medical students need immediate access to this rapidly expanding information and while the Internet provides the gateway, the onus still rests on the teacher to direct the students to sites where reliable and current information can be accessed. This explosion in biomedical knowledge has also resulted in a change in the delivery of medical education and the rapid shift from traditional educative approaches to a non-didactic problembased philosophy seen in the 1990s perhaps represents a strategy by which both students and teachers can cope with and hopefully manage this ever-expanding arena of information[1,7,8]. In the lecture-based traditional teaching system students are passive recipients of information whereas in a Problem-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum they are active participants in the learning process with emphasis on self-directed learning[9-11]. In the PBL curriculum, students take responsibility for their own learning through small group discussions during which problems are identified and learning objectives generated[12;13]. The students are expected to use diverse learning resources to gather relevant information and literature and prepare these in a concise manner for group discussion. ABSTRACT