The gap between medical faculty’s perceptions and use of e-learning resources

Background: e-Learning resources have become increasingly popular in medical education; however, there has been scant research on faculty perceptions and use of these resources. Objective: To investigate medical faculty’s use of e-learning resources and to draw on practical implications for fostering their use of such resources. Design: Approximately 500 full-time faculty members in 35 medical schools across the nation in South Korea were invited to participate in a 30-item questionnaire on their perceptions and use of e-learning resources in medical education. The questionnaires were distributed in both online and paper formats. Descriptive analysis and reliability analysis were conducted of the data. Results: Eighty faculty members from 28 medical schools returned the questionnaires. Twenty-two percent of respondents were female and 78% were male, and their rank, disciplines, and years of teaching experience all varied. Participants had positive perceptions of e-learning resources in terms of usefulness for student learning and usability; still, only 39% of them incorporated those resources in their teaching. The most frequently selected reasons for not using e-learning resources in their teaching were ‘lack of resources relevant to my lectures,’ ‘lack of time to use them during lectures,’ and ‘was not aware of their availability.’ Conclusions: Our study indicates a gap between medical faculty’s positive perceptions of e-learning resources and their low use of such resources. Our findings highlight the needs for further study of individual and institutional barriers to faculty adoption of e-learning resources to bridge this gap.