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Dear Dr. Alvares:
It is now well established that computer-aided learning (CAL) offers significant advantages over traditional methods of learning because it allows students to work on their own time and at their own pace—in other words, learning that is "anytime, anywhere."1 The Internet has been adopted by people all over the world as a primary medium for information and entertainment. Estimates indicate that the number of sites on the World Wide Web doubles almost every year and that there are more than one billion regular users of the Internet.2 Internet-mediated dental education offers numerous advantages like easy access, low cost, minimal paper waste, rapid publication of literature, immense availability of data, flexibility in usage, and many more. Most, if not all, universities in North America and Europe have gone a step ahead by providing their students with data, lectures, handouts, notes and/or website links on their university sites.3
While conducting a survey on trends, attitudes, and perceptions of Indian dental students about Internet usage in dental colleges in North India, we carried out an informal assessment of Internet availability in these colleges, including whether Internet access for students was free and whether colleges provided learning material on their websites. Information was obtained by telephone interview from one faculty member randomly selected from each of twenty-two dental colleges in North India. The majority of these colleges, which include both private and government institutions, conduct a four-year B.D.S. program with a class size of approximately 100 students per year. A total of about 7,000 students are enrolled in these schools, excluding interns. The majority of these colleges offer only undergraduate (B.D.S.) curricula.
The faculty participating in this study reported that only ten of these colleges (45.45 percent) currently have an Internet facility in their libraries. Of these, six colleges were postgraduate program providers. The Internet was available free of charge to students in only six colleges out of the twenty-two (27.27 percent). However, the colleges that allowed students free Internet access also charged them for printouts. None of the colleges surveyed provided any kind of intranet facility (i.e., internal Internet system accessible only to students and faculty) or learning material on their own university/college website.
No one can deny that Indian dental graduates are generally considered adequately trained, especially given the enormous number of dentists of Indian origin working in other countries. The Dental Council of India, in its efforts to standardize the education quality of all dental colleges in India and to make dental education in India world-class, recommends that all Indian dental colleges provide an Internet facility in their libraries. Though India is commonly perceived to be a very successful major player in the information technology revolution, it seems that Indian dental colleges are far behind their Western counterparts with regard to the optimal use of computer and Internet technology. In the year 2000, this kind of digital divide was highlighted by the World Health Organization as "more dramatic than any other inequity in health or income."4
The cost of computers and Internet usage charges have plummeted in India in the recent past. Many international as well as Indian publishers provide free access to the full text of scholarly articles for the developing world so as to keep costs to the institutes and students in this region of the world to a minimum. In spite of discounts from these publishing houses and the availability of many more e-journals and other material on the Internet, it appears that lack of motivation among school administrators and ignorance of the magnitude of benefit of the Internet and computer-aided learning in the dental curriculum are depriving students of the benefits of e-education in the majority of North Indian dental colleges. This is an alarming trend that urgently needs reversal.
REFERENCES
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