Pharmacists’ Familiarity with E-learning in Transferring Pharmaceutical Knowledge in the Arab World

This study is the first of its kind in the Arab world and it aimed to reveal Arab pharmacists and pharmacy students' familiarity with e-learning in transferring pharmaceutical knowledge. It aims to explore their usage of the internet and social media and the frequency of using web 2.0 tools in their daily lives. This study is a cross-sectional study that targeted Arab pharmacists and pharmacy students using social media sites in their daily lives. Six hundred and eighty respondents completed the online survey, and most of them were 18-30 years old, females, and possessing their internet connection. Most respondents (n=491, 72.2%) had intermediate computer and internet skills and used the internet for educational purposes (n=609, 89.6%). Almost all of the respondents (n=635, 93.4%) were using the internet daily and more than half of them (n=360, 53.0%) used social media and web 2.0 tools for more than two hours daily. More than half of the respondents were not familiar with e-learning (n=367, 54.0%), and most of them did not attend any online course ever (n=484, 71.2%). Almost all of the participants had either intermediate or high confidence levels in e-learning (n=669, 98.4%) and the vast majority of them were confident of using web 2.0 tools as learning aids which motivated them to learn interactively (n=548, 80.6%; n=524, 77% respectively). This study showed promising results regarding implementing e-learning and novel web 2.0 tools in pharmacy.

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