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Technology Needs Assessment of Medical, Dental, Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Students
Author(s) -
Foreman K. Bo,
Morton David A.,
Musolino Gina Maria,
Albertine Kurt H.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.20.4.a419
Subject(s) - the internet , medical education , occupational therapy , download , psychology , medicine , multimedia , computer science , physical therapy , world wide web
The type of computer and related equipment used by students, students’ network connection, students’ ability to download plug‐ins required to run applications, and students’ ability and/or knowledge to navigate various browsers may compromise access to computer‐assisted instructional (CAI) material. An increased understanding of these issues should improve design and use of CAI material. Therefore, the goal of our questionnaire study was to identify potential or perceived barriers for accessing CAI material by medical (n=89), dental (n=10), physical therapy (PT) (n=37), and occupational therapy (OT) (n=23) students. The distribution of answers among the four groups of students were similar so we pooled the results. The principal results showed that 99% of students used computers to study. The majority of students (56%) connected to the internet, using a high‐speed connection. In addition, 54% of the students used CD and floppy disc drives as their primary peripheral equipment. Other results suggested that the majority of students used the internet (99%), downloaded content (72%), and installed plug‐ins (86%). Lastly, our results showed most of the students preferred electronic course material for review but preferred paper material for lectures. We conclude that the assessment of the technological capabilities and needs of medical, dental, PT, and OT students is important to optimize the design and access of CAI tools. [Supported by The University of Utah Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and School of Medicine]