University faculty on student motivation to use medical education apps and barriers to their usage

- OBJECTIVE: University teach-ers, who primarily provide guidance and advice to their students, can play a significant role in ed-ucational process transformation. As there is no particular e-learning framework, it is important to understand the factors and variables that may impact both its effective usage and further suc-cessful implementation. The current study aims to outline the influence of university faculty, and possible barriers preventing medical students from using apps for learning purposes.SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Alpha cross-section-al study was conducted with an online survey questionnaire. The population of the study in-cluded 1,458 students from all the seven Greek schools of medicine.RESULTS: University faculty (51.7%), followed by fellow students and friends (55.6%), constitute the second most common source of information on adopting apps for medical education. 45.8% of students rated their educational guidance as insuf-ficient/inadequate, 33.0% as moderate, 18.6% as quite good, and only 2.7% as sufficient/complete. University professors have proposed certain apps to 25.5% of students. PubMed (41.7%), Medscape (20.9%), and Complete Anatomy (12.2%) were the leading suggestions. The main barriers to app us-age were the lack of knowledge of apps' bene-fits (28.8%), insufficient updates of their content (21.9%), their cost-effectiveness (19.2%), and fi-nancial reasons (16.2%). Most students preferred using free apps (51.4%) and 76.7% preferred uni-versities to cover apps' expenses.CONCLUSIONS: University faculty represent the main source of information regarding the ad-aptation of medical apps in the educational pro-cess. However, students need improved and en-hanced guidance. The main barriers are igno-rance about apps and financial reasons. The ma-jority prefer free apps and universities to cover their cost.