The College of Medical and Dental Sciences have been finding new ways to integrate technology into teaching to ensure our students have the most innovative and up to date technology available to them to maximise their study opportunities.
A team comprising members of the Educational Technology Team and Library Services ran a scheme from September 2012 to June 2013, named ‘iLearn’, to investigate the benefits of mobile learning and access to e-books and study skills Apps with a selection of student cohorts from two undergraduate curricula, Medicine and Medical Science. iPads were loaned to six students from three cohorts, whilst other tablet-owning students were invited to participate.
Tablets have great potential for radically altering student learning behaviour through their ability to capture, store and exchange rich information in an easily accessible and inspirational way.
Student’s use of the devices was closely monitored through monthly surgeries to examine impact on their typical learning experiences, including lectures, seminars, project work and revising for exams.
The project showed positive results and it was noted that the devices would have great benefit especially in the clinical years where self-directed learning, reflection and information retrieval is greatest.
The College now plans to continue to explore these opportunities and plans to create a mobile-friendly curriculum for the placement-focused MBChB Medicine and Surgery, Year 3, to further invest in tablets to examine use of alternative brands, forms and capabilities, to create a new website to showcase best practice and most suitable apps and investigate tablet use for specialised teaching sessions: eg Anatomy.
If you’d like to hear more about the project, you can view an interesting, and unique, video about the project here.