Evaluation of an internet-based e-learning module to introduce nuclear medicine to medical students: a feasibility study.

Background: The advent of electronic learning, the so-called e-learning, offers new possibilities for instruction in addition to the traditional face-to-face teaching in the education of medical students.

Aim: To evaluate the additional educational value of a voluntary e-learning module in a nuclear medicine course for third-year medical students.

Methods: Twenty exemplary nuclear medicine patient cases from our department were developed for e-learning purposes and presented on the internet using the web-based training program ‘CaseTrain’. Subsequently, three selected test cases were handled and evaluated by an unselected population of third-year medical students.

Results: One hundred and twenty-eight students studied the three patient cases and filled out the evaluation questionnaire completely. The most important result is that both the interest in and the subjective feeling of the knowledge level regarding the specialized field of nuclear medicine had increased significantly after working through the three e-learning cases. Ninety-seven percent of the evaluating students considered the use of computer-based learning useful. The subjective grading of the content of the cases and the handling of the software were graded with high marks by the participants, 1.9 and 2.0, respectively, on a linear scale with 1 being the best and 6 being the worst.

Conclusion: The addition of e-learning to face-to-face teaching as a form of ‘blended learning’ is highly appreciated by medical students, and will provide an effective medium for bringing better understanding of nuclear medicine to future colleagues.