Student Usage of Supplemental Online Resources at a Regional Medical School Campus

Medical students have self-reported the importance of online resources for learning course materials and for preparing for USMLE exams. However, reports describing the actual usage of online resources by medical students are less abundant. In this article, we report the actual usage of institutionally-provided online resources by first-year students from the Medical College of Wisconsin-Central Wisconsin (MCW-CW) regional campus. From 2017 through 2022, different cohorts of first-year students were provided access to three different online supplemental resources: Draw It to Know It (DITKI), Osmosis and Anatomy.TV (powered by Primal Pictures). Most of the students in the study accessed one or more online resources, but the extent to which students accessed each of these materials was highly variable. Based on self-reported data we expected more students to use these resources to a greater degree. Our results suggest that rather than purchasing institutional licenses to online resources, institutional funds might be better used in another manner, possibly by providing students a scholarship/stipend towards an individual license to an online resource for which the student can provide evidence of extensive use.