Mobile technologies are becoming commonplace in society and in education. In higher education, it is crucial to understand the impact of constant access to information on the development of the knowledge and competence of the learner. This study reports on a series of four surveys completed by UK-based medical students (n 0443) who received tablet computers (iPads) from their medical school during their 4th year of study. Students were surveyed prior to receiving the iPads and again regarding their usage and experiences at 2, 6 and 12 months post receipt of tablets. Findings indicate that students differed in their use of iPads but that the majority felt that tablets had impacted on their learning and the majority were using them frequently (at least once a day) during learning. Almost half of the students reported that clinical supervisors had raised the possibility of tablets changing patient care. These results, although only descriptive, raise important questions about the impact of mobile technologies on learning.Keywords: clinical learning; just-in-time technology; mobile technologies; survey; tablet computers; undergraduate medical education
IntroductionThe use of mobile technology (mtechnology) is growing. In the UK, OFCOM (the independent regulator and competition authority for the UK communications industries) reported in 2013 that 51% of adults owned a smart phone, using it to connect to the internet, and 80% of smartphone owners also owned a tablet device, such as an iPad. Twenty percent of adults own a tablet device, with tablet ownership doubling from 2012 to 2013 (OFCOM 2013). More than 30% of webpage traffic came from mobile devices in February 2013. Since the huge growth of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, access to knowledge has impacted on teaching and learning. Students entering higher education in the UK in recent years have been referred to as 'digital natives', i.e. people born after 1980 who have, therefore, been brought up in an era with personal computing (Prensky 2001). This has led to theories that current students think and process information differently to cohorts of students who were brought up before widespread computer technology ( that, although students differ in their quantitative use of technologies, i.e. some students use more technology than others, there is no evidence that students who are 'digitally native' use technology in a different way from those who are not (Margaryan, Littlejohn, and Vojt 2011).The availability of facts has undoubtedly coincided with, and perhaps contributed to, the shift in focus from teaching to facilitating learning, congruent with the fall of lecturing and the rise in enquiry-based forms of learning in medical education. The growth of mobile, so-called 'just-in-time' technologies, however, is set to change the face of medical education and practice even more profoundly. Now, more than ever, facts and complex processing capacity are readily and constantly available for students and healthcare professionals in high-income, and increasingly low...