The Effect of Mobile Learning in Clinical Learning in Birjand University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

Background: Today, mobile phone technology has provided an opportunity for teachers and students to improve their continuous teaching/ learning process. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of learning via mobile phone in the course of clinical pharmacology of medical students at pediatric ward. Methods: In this semi-experimental study, 40 medical students at their last year of internship were studied with easy census method. Students were divided into two groups, case and control. Training in the case group was based on the e-content in pharmacology software installed on their mobiles and also the usual form of training in clinic and ward. In the control group, the learning was only based on usual form of training in clinic and ward. At the beginning and at the end of each period two groups were assessed by Objective Structured Clinical Examination OSCE. Data entry into SPSS 16.5 software were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent and paired T-Test test at the level of P Results: Comparing mean scores in both case and control groups of medical students who were learning clinical pharmacology showed no significant difference before intervention (P =0.1), but the progress of case group were significantly higher than the control group after intervention (P = 0.001). The means of detecting use of drugs (P =0.02), calculation of doses (P = 0.001) and cognition of side effects (P =0.04) were significantly higher in case group. Conclusions: Due to the results of this study, educational software installed on mobile phones is potentially capable of learning improving in medical students. It is recommended that officials use the software for the effectiveness of educational programs, and promotion of educational quality in medical science.