[Knowledge and attitudes of dental students and academic staffs towards internet usage in dental training in Shahid Beheshti university of medical sciences]

ABSTRACT

Since early 1990's, internet has been used to train medical and dental students and practitioners. The aim of this study was to evaluate attitudes and believes of dental students and academic staffs towards internet usage in dental training in Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. In this cross-sectional study, 305 dental students and 79 academic staffs were evaluated. The questionnaire consisted of some questions to record the demographic data, along with 14 close-ended 3 open-ended and 1 composed questions. The scales of questions were nominal or ordinal, as indicated. Ninety-two percent of students had access to computer and 93.4% to internet. These rates were 98.7% and 97.5% respectively among academic staff. Both groups frequently accessed the internet at university and home. Only 15.1% of students and 6.3% of academic staff were unsatisfied regarding the accuracy of information on the internet about dentistry. The academic staffs were believed more strongly in favor of the possible usefulness of access to lecture notes on the dental school website than students. Nevertheless this group more strongly believed that this possibility may reduce student attendance at lecture. Access rate to internet is satisfactory among both dental students and their teachers. Also, both groups had relatively positive attitude towards using internet for dental training