Student reactions to online tools for learning to use the Internet as a study tool: outside the comfort zone?

The Internet is a valuable source of health related information, however students are not maximising their use of this resource. A study was undertaken to see what resources were already available to help them develop the necessary skills, and to identify the elements of an Internet study guide that were of importance to the students. An extensive search of the Internet, using a variety of search terms in Google and Yahoo located numerous study support sites. Ten focus groups were held with a total of 60 students on a variety of health and social care related courses at an English university. Rather than finding what the students were looking for in an online study guide the research found that using an online support system took the majority of students outside of their comfort zone, resulting in them rejecting online support and expressing a preference for personal or hard copy support and materials. The way online materials are structured into courses is explored as a possible reason for these difficulties and a flow chart to help students identify resources is presented