Teaching physicians to address unhealthy alcohol use: A randomized controlled trial assessing the effect of a Web-based module on medical student performance

Online eLearning for undergraduates in health professions: A systematic review of the impact on knowledge, skills, attitudes and satisfaction

“…The remaining 42 studies (70%) have been published in the shorter time interval between 2008 and mid 2013 (ie, 5.5 years). Out of all 60 included studies, 33 studies investigated eLearning in the field of medicine [26,28,32,34–36,38–41,44,45,49,50,54,58–62,64–70,72,75,77,78,80,82]. Eleven of the articles [25,27,33,42,43,53,56,74,76,79,83] were exclusively from nursing, 3 [55,57,81] were within the field of physical therapy, whereas 3 other studies within pharmacy [30, 31, 71].…”

“…Overall, 53 [25–27,29–33,35–46,48–52,54,56–67,69,70,72–83] out of the 60 studies looked at a knowledge as an outcome. Nineteen of these studies [25,32,35,40,43,45,48–50,56,57,60,69,72,74,75,77,80,82] used only multiple choice questions (MCQs) to test students’ knowledge and understanding. Six studies used MCQs as a knowledge assessment tool together with an adaptive spaced test [36], gap text questions [51], matching and short answer questions [61], open ended and true/false questions [64], short essay questions [81] and a key features test [59].…”

“…Skills were evaluated in 16 studies [28–30,32–34,39,42,53,55,57,63,68,69,71,72] using various methods to assess the outcome. Nine studies [33,34,42,55,63,68,71,72] used a rating scale and/or checklists (eg, an OSCE) to assess clinical skills. One study [53] used a search skills test, another 1 [29] a Likert type questionnaire while 3 studies evaluated students skills through written assessments such as data collection sheets [30], written case analysis [41] and open questions on standardised tasks [32].…”

“…Feedback from students assessed as their attitude towards the eLearning intervention was reported as an outcome in a total of 14 studies [28,29,32,33,43,45,48,49,54–56,63,64,72]. In all of these, students’ attitude was measured by questionnaires.…”

“…[25,33,34,36,38–41,44,49–51,53,55,57,60,62–64,69,70,72,74–77,79–81,83]. Twenty–nine of the studies [26,30,32,35,43,48,52,54,56,59,61,65–67,73,78] had 1 or more categories classified as an unclear risk of bias, especially regarding the allocation of participants to intervention groups.…”