Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
7-29-2015
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Smartphones and tablets play a very significant role in medical students and staff information seeking behaviour in meeting their teaching, learning and research needs. This study investigated the impact of Smartphones/Tablets on the information seeking behaviour of medical students and staff in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The descriptive survey design was adopted for the study using questionnaire as the main instrument for data collection from a population of 500 medical students and staff of the four faculties of the Niger Delta University College of Health Sciences. The questionnaire was personally administered to the respondents in their lecture halls and offices. Data collected were analyzed using tables, frequencies and simple percentages. A total of 460 out of the 500 questionnaire returned was found useful for data analysis showing 92% rate of response. The study revealed high level of awareness and use of smartphones/tablets by medical students and staff for their academic works. Results also shows that smartphones/tablets has made tremendous impact on their medical education most especially with easy and fast internet access, high speed browsing, saves time and money going to cybercafé/college library, easy access to medical teaching and e-learning materials/e-textbooks. Lack of technical experts on repairs when faulty within campus, operational difficulties, high cost of data subscription from service providers and fragility were identified as the major problems they encountered in using smartphones/tablets. The study recommended the need for medical university management to collaborate with IT companies to develop smartphones/tablets capable of supporting their seeking of medical and health information.