On the use and value of new media and how medical students assess their effectiveness in learning anatomy.

The new media have become widely used tools in medical instruction today. But are they regarded as useful by students training to become medical doctors? What are students' most important criteria for a good CD-ROM or valuable Internet resources? To answer these questions, and to obtain definite data on the use of new media, we distributed a questionnaire to preclinical medical and dental students of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. The evaluation of 397 questionnaires demonstrates that 94.9% of the students use personal computers; 91.6% of the 85.8% who own a computer have access to the Internet. The Internet is used at least once a week by 70.1% of students for private…