Abstract

E-learning in clinical education: a questionnaire study of clinical teachers� experiences and attitudes

Author(s): Dr Gerard J Gormley,Dr Catherine Coyle,Dr Jenny Johnston,Mrs Clare Thomson

Objective: To sample clinical teachers’ experiences and attitudes towards the effectiveness of e-learning and how it should be utilised in medical student clinical teaching.

Methods: A self administered postal questionnaire was developed to capture clinical teachers’ (1) demographic details, (2) main location and frequency of clinical teaching, (3) usage of e-learning in clinical teaching, (4) perceived IT ability, (5) attitudes and perceived impact of e-learning in clinical education, (6) perceived effectiveness of various e-learning mediums in clinical teaching, and (7) perceived impact of e-learning on specific learning domains. The questionnaire was distributed to all clinical teachers affiliated to Queen’s University Belfast, UK (n=319). Responses were rated on five-point Likert scales. Results: The response rate was 71% (227/319). Respondents reported using e-learning to various degrees in their clinical teaching. Generally they felt comfortable using computers, but were not as confident using e-learning. Overall, they felt that e-learning had made a positive impact on their ability to deliver clinical teaching, particularly in terms of standardisation of teaching and transparency of the curriculum. However, they were concerned that e-learning may encourage learner isolation and not promote learning with real patients. In terms of different e-learning mediums, teachers felt that more visually intense mediums such as clinical demonstration videos and images were more beneficial to students’ clinical learning. They also felt that e-learning had a greater impact on more knowledge based domains than communication, clinical examination and procedural domains of learning.

Conclusion: Clinical teachers value e-learning in its ability to deliver clinical teaching and promote students’ clinical learning. Despite being confident using computers they are less confident in using e-learning, but expressed a desire to improve these skills. They consider e-learning to be best utilised in a blended learning strategy particularly in more theoretical based learning domains, such as clinical reasoning and knowledge acquisition. However, there is still a role for e-learning in clinical skills training, particularly using visually intense mediums. Learning with real patients should always underpin clinical teaching and only ever be supplemented by e-learning – never replaced.