ERIC Number: EJ833424
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2009
Pages: 11
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1436-4522
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
The Information Commitments toward Web Information among Medical Students in Taiwan
Liang, Jyh-Chong; Tsai, Chin-Chung
Educational Technology & Society, v12 n1 p162-172 2009
The purpose of this study was to investigate medical students' information commitments toward online web medical information. The sample consisted of 534 volunteer medical university students with internet experience from 6 medical universities in Taiwan. This study used the Information Commitment Survey (ICS) for an investigation of medical students' standards of judging online information, and their search strategies on the Web. The results showed that the ICS was deemed to be sufficiently reliable for assessing medical students' information commitments toward Web-based information. It was also found that gender difference existed in the students' usage of certain searching strategies. Another finding was that students with more Internet experience tended to utilize the "elaboration" searching strategy while being oriented towards employing quite "mixed" standards for judging online information. The results also revealed that medical students held less sophisticated information commitments than university students in general, particularly when comparing to the female students. The findings strongly suggest that medical students need additional training for using the Internet to seek information and that medical educators implementing Internet-assisted instructional activities need to find some methods to help medical students, especially the female students, to develop more sophisticated information commitments. (Contains 7 tables.)
Descriptors: Medical Students, Search Strategies, Foreign Countries, Internet, Gender Differences, Information Retrieval, Scientific and Technical Information, Use Studies, Value Judgment, Likert Scales, Student Surveys, User Satisfaction (Information), Questionnaires, Cognitive Style
International Forum of Educational Technology & Society. Athabasca University, School of Computing & Information Systems, 1 University Drive, Athabasca, AB T9S 3A3, Canada. Tel: 780-675-6812; Fax: 780-675-6973; Web site: http://www.ifets.info
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Higher Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Taiwan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A