Abstract:

Introduction:
In the winter semester of the academic year 2012/2013 the Physiotherapy students, for the first time at Warsaw Medical University, participated in a compulsory e-learning course run within the "Methodology of research studies" course. The course comprised the following 7 thematic modules: Types of diploma theses, Scientific literature databases, Rules of quoting and references, Elaboration of questionnaire study results, Prepress text formatting of a diploma thesis, Preparation of multimedia presentation for a diploma thesis defence, Polish scientific journals. Students could start the course at any time chosen by each of them individually and had a constant, unlimited access to all teaching materials for the entire semester. Each e-module was awarded a credit after completing a particular task. Working time and activity of students on Moodle platform were not specified. Passing the e-course: by the end of the winter semester, at any time.

Aim of study:
The aim of the study was to analyse in detail the working time and activity of third year full-time Physiotherapy students during the e-learning "Methodology of research studies" course with respect to the analysis of the number of class hours devoted to traditional lectures and seminars with an academic teacher conducted in the previous years.

Materials and Methods:
81 third year full-time Physiotherapy students participated in the e-learning course (all third year students). Detailed working time was analysed on the basis of the reports of activity of the students during the "Methodology of research studies" course that were available on the e-learning Moodle platform: date of the first login, total amount of working time of a student, duration of the analysis of the teaching materials presented in the course, date of the first attempt to get a credit for the e-course, time spent on writing tests to be awarded a credit for each module.

Results:
In the first month of the e-learning course, the average number of logins amounted to 344, whereas in the last month the students logged in most often: 1531 times. The "Types of diploma theses" module seemed to be the most time-consuming one, whereas the non-compulsory "Polish scientific journals" module occurred to be least time-consuming. The students logged in to the course as little as 48 times before the semester started, and the number of logins amounted to 5968 after finishing the semester and getting a credit.

Conclusions:
1. Students do not effectively use the time devoted to participation in the e-learning course by postponing learning until the end of the semester. Therefore, it seems to be justified to develop e-learning courses with a strict time framework, which would make the learning process of students more regular and would also improve the quality of their self-education.
2. The number of class hours assigned to the "Methodology of research studies" course is inadequate to the real working time of students on the e-learning course and it should be considered to increase this number.
3. Among the study group, the students used the teaching materials presented in the e-learning course on a regular basis after finishing the semester and getting a credit, which demonstrates that the teaching content offered during the e-course was found useful. Therefore, the continuation of the "Methodology of research studies" course in this form of teaching in the following years seems to be justified.

Keywords:

Working time, activity, Physiotherapy students, e-learning.