%0 Journal Article
%T Computer literacy and attitudes towards e-learning among first year medical students
%A Thomas Link
%A Richard Marz
%J BMC Medical Education
%D 2006
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1472-6920-6-34
%X The study was conducted in an introductory course on computer-based and web-based training (CBT/WBT). Students were asked to fill out a questionnaire online that covered a wide range of relevant attitudes and experiences.While the great majority of students possess sufficient computer skills and acknowledge the advantages of interactive and multimedia-enhanced learning material, a small percentage lacks basic computer skills and/or is very skeptical about e-learning. There is also a consistently significant albeit weak gender difference in available computer infrastructure and Internet access. As for student attitudes toward e-learning, we found that age, computer use, and previous exposure to computers are more important than gender. A sizable number of students, 12% of the total, make little or no use of existing e-learning offerings.Many students would benefit from a basic introduction to computers and to the relevant computer-based resources of the university. Given to the wide range of computer skills among students, a single computer course for all students would not be useful nor would it be accepted. Special measures should be taken to prevent students who lack computer skills from being disadvantaged or from developing computer-hostile attitudes.Computer literacy has been a subject of educational research ever since personal computers were introduced to the classroom, either as teaching aids or as tools for self-study. In the 1980s, research on computer literacy focused on the question whether medical students were ready for the foreseeable omnipresence of computers in the future doctors' professional environments [1-4], i.e., whether they possessed the necessary computer skills [2,5-9]. The vision of a knowledge-based society saw future economic wealth dependent on people's abilities to deal with the growing information load and to adapt to an ever-changing working environment [10-13]. It was assumed that computers would become ubiquitous tools for managin
%U http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6920/6/34