Project Investigator(s): Kathryn Darras, Resident, Department of Radiology; Bruce Forster, Professor and Head, Department of Radiology; Claudia Krebs, Professor of Teaching, Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences; Savvas Nicolaou, Associate Professor, Department of Radiology
Project Description
In November 2016, the undergraduate radiology team launched a novel free iOS and Android app designed with validated educational pedagogical approaches and cutting edge technology, to complement the 4 year medical undergraduate curriculum at UBC. (The app can be viewed at www.ubcradiologyapp.ca) The purpose of this project is to evaluate the utility of this mobile app in teaching basic radiology and to explore the role of mobile apps in flexible learning.
Research Questions
The purpose of this project is to evaluate the educational utility of an app to teach basic radiology and to better understand how students interact with this type of electronic resource. The specific questions are:
1. Which elements of a radiology app do medical students find most useful in their learning of radiological anatomy and clinical reasoning in radiology?
2. Does using the app correlate with improved performance on the first-year anatomy exam?
3. Does the app improve clinical decision making in radiology for third year medical students?
Impact on teaching and learning at UBC
Most electronic resources for learning medicine, focus on e-learning platforms, including online modules. To date, not much is known about the way in which students specifically learn from mobile apps. Our research questions will evaluate the feasibility of using an app for flexible learning in radiology teaching and determine which learning strategies are most useful for creating teaching material for an app format. Since mobile apps can be very expensive to develop so it is important for us to have a sound understanding of how to proceed to ensure that the final product is as useful and relevant as possible for students.
Currently, the UBC Radiology Teaching app is the only curriculum-based UBC app and the only app known to incorporate an entire medical school course. The results of this study will be extremely valuable for all educators using in electronic educational content to design flexible learning environments. This is the first study that we know of which evaluates the effectiveness of integrating a mobile app into a medical school curriculum. This will be useful information of all educators who design medical, science or healthcare curricula.