Information seeking behavior of medical undergraduates, Sri Lanka. Annual scientific meeting,

Abstract

The themes identified varied from conceptualization of information seeking behaviours to needs, strategies, barriers and facilitators. Students use limited sources of information in classroom-based learning and they confine mainly to material provided by teachers, i.e. teacher-directed behaviour (“Lecturers guide us and give reference materials to refer. We tend to seek information based on their recommendations.”). This was primarily driven by exam-orientation and the belief of learning (“We seek information to target our exams and we do not go beyond that.”). They seek information external sources, e.g. web, while they learn in clinical environment, i.e. self-directed behaviour, as they face with more uncertainty in learning. Web sources used ranged from informal sources (“Most instances I use Wikipedia for convenience sake.”) to standard sources (“We find information from Medscape, otherwise we refer Radiopaedia or Up To Date.”). Although the participants were millennials some tend to prefer printed material which gives them a higher sense of ‘confidence’ (“Personally I prefer to have printed materials and use textbooks because I can understand better from textbooks.”). The role of a traditional library seems to be weaning-off with smart phones and tablets gaining popularity (“We normally use mobile phones and tablets for seeking information, not the library.”)