Evaluation of Mobile Authoring and Tutoring in Medical Issues

Mobile computing facilities may provide many assets to the educational process. Mobile technology provides software access from anywhere and at any time, as well as computer equipment independence. The need for time and place independence is even greater for medical instructors and medical students. Medical instructors are usually doctors that have to treat patients on top of their tutoring duties. Mobile features are complementary to web-based features for desktop computers to a high extend in asynchronous e-learning environments. Time and place independence is also a considerable potential for medical students with overloaded educational duties. This paper examines the degree of the usefulness of mobile facilities for medical instructors who wish to author and manage their courses by using a mobile authoring tool. Furthermore, this paper investigates how acceptable and useful the mobile features of an e-learning system have been to medical students who have used the system, in comparison with the use of the system through a desktop computer. In addition, it investigates usability issues. (Contains 7 figures.) [Support for this work was provided by the General Secretariat of Research and Technology, Greece, under the auspices of the PENED-2003 program.]