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Online
teaching is beneficial for remote users, allowing them to learn at their
own speed and the time and place of their choosing. However, data are lacking
on whether cyberspace is an appropriate place to learn database searching.
Purpose: To
investigate the differences between teaching searching skills via web-based
tutorial and traditional lecture.
Subjects:
First year medical students at the University of Michigan Medical School.
Methodology:
A Randomized 174 medical students into four groups, two receiving
traditional lecture instruction in the use of Medline and two performing
self-study on a tutorial. Each lecture lasted 25 minutes with tutorial
groups being given an equal amount of time. The same question was presented
to each group, with the resultant search strategy to be e-mailed to the
medical library. Ten minutes were allowed for the search formulation.
Searches were scored by two examiners based on 10 criteria, with
0.5 to 2 points being deducted for each error%2C the highest score being
a 5.
Results: We
found no significant difference in test scores between the lecture groups
(2.73 and 3.94) and the tutorial groups (3.87 and 4.08). The errors
across all the groups were similar: failure to use MeSH terms and to set
limits properly.
Conclusions:
We found no differences between lecture and tutorial methods. Consequently,
we suggest that the benefits realized by online teaching are equal to those
of traditional lecturing. However, we identified similar problems
associated with both methods: specifically, that test subjects in both
groups often failed to make proper use of MeSH terms and were confused
about how to limit searches.
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