Abstract:

Annually an average of 646 students enter to Medical School at the University of Guadalajara. They are Split into two groups, one that enters on the first half of the year, while the second group enters during the second half of the school year. On the second half of the 2009 school year, there were 316 students who entered to Medical School. 298 of them assisted the induction course and from them 286 agreed to answer a survey, which had the goal of detecting the experience this new students have in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s).
Material and method. The material used was a printed survey. The method was a mixed one, since the survey included Likert like items and open ended questions. Also, a section to collect demographic information was included in the survey. This section asked the students for information about their place of origin, school in which they went to High School, age, gender, years using computers and Internet, access to a computer and Internet from home.
Results. The findings from this study indicated that there were important differences in the use of ICT’s between students from urban and rural communities. Also, it was found that the students who started using ICT’s at an early age, had integrated their use in their everyday life, both for finding information and for communicating with their peers, while those students who started using ICT’s at an advanced age, had difficulty to integrate them to their regular lives, and there were even some older students who rejected their use. Another finding was that from the students who entered Medical School on the second half of the 2008 school year, women in general had a greater integration of ICT’s’ use on their regular lives.

Keywords:

Use of ICT’s, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, first year students in Medical School, digital divide, cognitive divide, and tutoring.