By Dr Malik Zaben, The Study Leading Supervisor
Electronic learning (E-learning) is defined as the use of Internet technologies to enhance knowledge and performance. E-learning technologies has been reported to offer learners control over content, learning sequence, pace of learning, time, and often media, allowing them to tailor their experiences to meet their personal learning objectives. Continuing health sciences education has witnessed an increasing activity in the development of e-learning modules, particularly with flexibility of this modality in terms of time and place of its use. While advanced Internet technology in health care learning is well established in developed countries, it is only recently becoming adopted in developing countries. We have established the International Medical Education Trust-Palestine (IMET2000-Pal) as a centre of excellence to provide health professionals in Palestine with e-learning facilities to enable them to pursue their postgraduate continuing education. We aim to provide a matrix of continuous health education (CHE) and encourage a culture of lifelong learning, by establishing a telemedicine network throughout Palestine and providing learning, educational and continuous training resources which transcend factional interests and physical or geographical barriers to access, as well as to create new learning tools for undergraduates, postgraduates and for continuous education for all healthcare professions.
To be able to work on and achieve the above objectives, we reviewed the current health education practice modalities and obtained the needed information to plan for e-learning continuing health education services in Palestine.
We surveyed medical doctors, dentists, pharmacists, nurses and other allied health workers in West Bank and Jerusalem. 618 respondents were interviewed face to face by field workers who were trained prior to the study.
Figure 1: The sample distribution based on the profession.
After we defined e-learning as a planned teaching/learning experience that uses a wide spectrum of technologies, mainly internet or computer-based, to reach learners, we asked in the questionnaire about the need for e-learning. According to our study, e-learning was much needed as stated by the vast majority of respondents (95.5%). The majority of respondents (62.6%) did prefer all types of e-learning methods. However, power point presentation and questions was the most preferred method of e-learning as indicated by 81.0% of respondents, followed by on-line articles (79.2%) then videoconferences (76.1%). Not unexpectedly, the main three obstacles indicated by the respondents to pursue e-learning activities were time limitation, internet access and computer use.
The results of this study show that for health professionals in Palestine, e-learning has been indicated as an important modality to complement lecture-based learning. This is especially of interest since the study was conducted in a group of health professionals distributed evenly among the different health subspecialties - including dentists, medical doctors, nurses and pharmacists- and those who have been practicing for long periods of time with presumably fewer computer skills. Interestingly, time limitation, limited internet access and computer skills have been identified as major barriers preventing health professionals in Palestine using e-learning in their education, rather than a lack of interest in this modality.
Figure 2: Views about E-learning by healthcare professionals.
This study is the first to demonstrate that e-learning is much needed by health professionals in Palestine. At the same time, it is the first study in the country that explores the opinions, the desires and the needs of this group of professionals. The results of this study are of great help for those who are interested in setting a continuing heath education program in developing countries including Palestine where economic resources are limited, yet the culture of educational excellence is strong. While this study has enabled us to identify the needs of the health education system in Palestine, it has guided us in planning our projects in an attempt to further develop this program. At the current time, we have started delivering our e-learning programs both in medical and nursing education. We are now planning to get the programs started in pharmacy and dental education. We will then move on to study the effectiveness of different forms of e-learning and also the persistence of knowledge gained over time.
