Choice of electronic v/s printed documents by southern Chilean dental students.

Abstract

In recent decades, the use of digital texts has replaced printed documents. This has generated changes in the way texts are presented and diffused as well as the students’ choice and the way of reading materials related to medicine. While some reports have evaluated the use of digital compared to print formats, there is no evidence about dental students’ preferences. The objective of this study is to determine preferences among dental students from six universities in the south of Chile for using printed versus electronic documents. A descriptive study based on a survey which was conducted among dental students in May and June, 2013, was designed. The proposed survey was adapted for collecting general student data and preferences for using electronic or traditional printed documents. Six schools and a total of 1.022 students, with an average age of 21.4 years, participated. A 93.3% of them reported using both types of documents. However, a 59.7% preferred printed documents. Only a 9.3% read documents directly from an electronic device. Students overwhelmingly preferred using printed documents than the electronic type. It is imperative to investigate the impact of new learning technologies in Chilean dental education.

Keywords

• Dentistry
• dental education
• electronic devices
• e-learning
• learning technologies.