Web-based learning: pros, cons and controversies.

By D. A. Cook. Clinical medicine (London), 2007

391 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Advantages of web-based learning (WBL) in medical education include overcoming barriers of distance and time, economies of scale, and novel instructional methods, while disadvantages include social isolation, up-front costs, and technical problems. Web-based learning is purported to facilitate individualised instruction, but this is currently more vision than reality. More importantly, many WBL instructional designs fail to incorporate principles of effective learning, and WBL is often used for the wrong reasons (e.g., for the sake of technology). Rather than trying to decide whether WBL is superior to or equivalent to other instructional media (research addressing this question will always be confounded), we should accept it as a potentially powerful instructional tool, and focus on learning when and how to use it. Educators should recognise that high fidelity, multimedia, simulations, and even WBL itself will not always be necessary to effectively facilitate learning.

Subfields: Family Practice, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9d1ebb56a9422ecb296f49048dab84b4b20d537a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Family Practice

  1. P. Erwin
  2. Marc M. Triola
  3. D. A. Cook

In Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

  1. P. Erwin
  2. Marc M. Triola
  3. D. A. Cook

In Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

  1. Marc M. Triola
  2. P. Erwin

Citations in the corpus