Learning Management System (LMS) for Integrating, Monitoring and Evaluating Professional Activities in a Medical Curriculum. The Experience at Humanitas University Medical School

Abstract

Background: Technology-enabled learning is increasingly important in teaching and learning medicine.At Humanitas University we started using LMS (LMS@Hunimed) also for the organization, management, storage and evaluation of medical education and professionalizing activities.We explored the perceived benefits and practical use of a LMS by The Office of Medical Education in organizing, managing and evaluating professionalizing activities.Summary of the work: An evaluation questionnaire on LMS was submitted to all members of the OME (7 members) and the Student Office (2 members). Furthermore, Humanitas University register’s office provided a quantitative evaluation of the working hours by the members of OME regarding organization, management and assessments of E- Portfolio on LMS compared with Portfolio before LMS.This study involves the testing of all four operational criteria on learning management system:- Effectiveness – The performance in accomplishment of tasks- Learning ability – The degree of learning to accomplish tasks.- Flexibility – The adaptation to variation in tasks and environments.- Attitude – The user satisfaction or suggestions for improvements.We choose to use a System Usability Scale (SUS), a simple, ten-item attitude scale , to provide an assessments of usability. Summary of results: The use of LMS showed improvements in work efficiency through a significant decrease in working hours. Furthermore, a qualitative analysis of the System Usability Scale (SUS) questions showed that teachers felt moreconfident to use LMS in their daily tasks compared to when using a non-digital approach.Conclusions: LMS@Hunimed showed positive results in providing functional direct access to messaging tools for communication and concrete didactic support for students, teachers and collaborators.