THE BARRIERS OF E-LEARNING IMPLEMENTATION IN MEDICAL SCIENCES DOMAIN AND PROVIDED THE NECESSARY SOLUTIONS

In today's world, e-learning as a knowledge acquisition tool have been
developed and changed in a rapidly expanded ways. In recent years, the use of online technologies in
education, provided opportunities for new ways of learning as well as effective methods of training.
Due to the potentialities of e-learning, its utilization in medical education was taken into serious
consideration. But the implementation of e-learning associated with the barriers. the objective of this
research is to identify these barriers and to provide appropriate solutions.
Materials & Methods: This study has two parts. In the first step, through the literature reviewing,
barriers and their related solutions of previous studies with regard to the e-learning have been
extracted. In the second phase, through cross-sectional descriptive study with randomized cluster
sampling, we gathered data from administrators, faculty members, and students of Urmia University of
Medical Sciences through semi-structured interview.
Results: The main barriers of implementing e-learning according to the priorities of the respondents
included: lack of technical infrastructure, the lack of appropriate attitude and knowledge, the lack of
management roadmap. The proposed solutions includes: determining E-learning project’s goals,
providing technical tools, reengineering of its related process, cooperation of IT and education
professionals.
Conclusion: According to the results, it seems necessary to provide infrastructure hardware, software
and network devices. In addition, educational administrators, teachers and students should have the
right attitude toward this knowledge according to the its characteristics, objectives, and benefits.