Evaluation of mobile learning: Students' experiences in a new rural-based medical school

BMC Medical Education

Research Article

Andre Ng¹  Andrew Oaten¹  Debra Nestel¹  Elmer Villanueva¹  Chris Browne¹  Katherine Gray¹  Robyn Hill¹  George Kotsanas² 

[1] Gippsland Medical School, Monash University, Gippsland Campus, Northways Road, Churchill, Victoria, Australia;Medicine Nursing and Health Science, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton, Victoria, Australia;

关键词: Mobile Learning;    Learning Resource;    Educational Method;    Virtual Learning Environment;    Educational Benefit;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6920-10-57

 received in 2010-05-05, accepted in 2010-08-11,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundMobile learning (ML) is an emerging educational method with success dependent on many factors including the ML device, physical infrastructure and user characteristics. At Gippsland Medical School (GMS), students are given a laptop at the commencement of their four-year degree. We evaluated the educational impact of the ML program from students' perspectives.MethodsQuestionnaires and individual interviews explored students' experiences of ML. All students were invited to complete questionnaires. Convenience sampling was used for interviews. Quantitative data was entered to SPSS 17.0 and descriptive statistics computed. Free text comments from questionnaires and transcriptions of interviews were thematically analysed.ResultsFifty students completed the questionnaire (response rate 88%). Six students participated in interviews. More than half the students owned a laptop prior to commencing studies, would recommend the laptop and took the laptop to GMS daily. Modal daily use of laptops was four hours. Most frequent use was for access to the internet and email while the most frequently used applications were Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Students appreciated the laptops for several reasons. The reduced financial burden was valued. Students were largely satisfied with the laptop specifications. Design elements of teaching spaces limited functionality. Although students valued aspects of the virtual learning environment (VLE), they also made many suggestions for improvement.ConclusionsStudents reported many educational benefits from school provision of laptops. In particular, the quick and easy access to electronic educational resources as and when they were needed. Improved design of physical facilities would enhance laptop use together with a more logical layout of the VLE, new computer-based resources and activities promoting interaction.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Nestel et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.