Discovering Students’ Personalised Uses of a Paediatrics Acute Care E-book – a Qualitative study

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Background: Medical educators are increasingly developing and recommending e-books to supplement students' learning. Despite this, there is a gap in the literature surrounding E-book developers' understanding of how students can personalize an e-book for multiple different purposes. This qualitative research project aimed to explore students' experiences of using a pediatric acute care E-book (pRRAPID) within a spiral, multi-method teaching package. The researchers aimed to get an insight into the ways that learners used E-books outside of the classroom. Methods: Three focus groups were conducted with 12 fourth-year medical students who had completed a pediatric acute care course. Students were invited to discuss their use of the E-book during the course. Thematic analysis was conducted on the transcripts to identify codes in the data; these were grouped to determine the overarching themes. Results: Students outlined five different ways that they personalized the use of the E-book. Three of these were related to uses of the E-book within the context of the pediatric acute care course; students using the E-book to prepare for a formal teaching session ("Flipped classroom"),students using the E-book as a workbook (going from start to end) and students using the E-book to prepare for an exam. The other two themes related to the use of the E-book outside of the acute care course; students using the E-book as a resource "on the go" and students using the E-book within clinical practice. Conclusions This qualitative study outlines how an educational resource can be utilized in numerous different ways in order to satisfy the needs of the student. Focus-group participants outlined how important it was to engage with the students, as the primary stakeholder, when developing an E-book.