Students' prior knowledge and skills in computer and internet use: An exploration of incoming first year undergraduate health sciences students at Gulu University, Uganda

Internet has provided infrastructure that enables access to a variety of information resources for use by medical students at Gulu University in Northern Uganda. However, little attention has been put to explore prior internet knowledge of undergraduate medical students in Uganda. Cross-sectional research design was used. Fifty-six first year undergraduate health sciences students participated in the study. Self-administered structured questionnaire was used for data collection and analysis was done using SPSS version 16. Results shows that a majority of the participants had prior knowledge of computer 48 (86.0%) and internet 44 (79.0%). 38 (68.0%) participants had access to internet and 34 (61.0%) owned computer before joining the University. Majority owned mobile phones 41 (73.0%) and used it for internet access 43 (84.0%). Use of internet was high in social media 46 (86.8) and searching general information 44 (84.6%). Participants expected easy access to teaching materials 52 (94.5%) and communication 49 (90.7%) via internet. These findings suggest need for healthcare librarians to train incoming medical students on use of ICTs; including social media platforms and mobile phones to improve their ICT literacy skills to enable them access the best academic information resources to enhance medical education.

Information needs and information resources availability for nursing students in mission-Owned schools of nursing in Imo state

This study investigated the information needs and information resources availability for nursing students in mission-owned schools of nursing in Imo State. The study adopted the descriptive survey research design and five research questions guided the study. All the 416 second and third year nursing students were used for the study. Questionnaire on Information Needs of Nursing Students and a Checklist on Information Resources Availability were the instruments used to collect data. A total of 397 copies of the questionnaire were completed and returned for analysis representing 95.4% of the total population. All the head- librarian of the schools of nursing complied with the checklist. The findings showed that the students need varieties of information. It also showed that the students consulted different sources, mainly textbooks and internet to meet their information needs. Print information resources were available in the libraries and only few electronic information resources were available. The study recommended that the nursing school authorities should be updating their print resources since students were observed to rely more on textbooks. Also the libraries should upgrade to higher bandwidth so as to have easier and faster access to more e-books and e-journals.Keywords: Information, Information needs, Print and Electronic Information Resources Availability, Nursing Education