Effectiveness of blending E-learning with field trip on Chinese herbal medicine education: quasi-experimental study

Abstract

Background: Chinese Medicine education is part of professional medical training in Hong Kong. An important element of this is herbal medicine, which requires both theoretical and practical knowledge. A field trip programme was adopted to provide students with direct experience of medicinal plants studied in lectures. However, problems with the current programme were identified in learning outcome assessment and long-term knowledge management. To improve the teaching quality, a Moodle e-learning module was designed for augmentation. This study aimed to quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of the Moodle module in supplementing the current field trip programme. Methods: Prospective quasi-experiment. Participants were 49 year-2 students in the Bachelor of Chinese Medicine programme. A Moodle module including five online activities regarding two groups of herbal plants was integrated before and after the field trip. Fill-in-the-blank questions were used to assess the learning outcome. Also, a questionnaire was developed to collect student feedback as the secondary outcome. Results: For herbal plants in Group A, the assessment score was higher in Moodle group (29.65 ± 5.0) than for the control group (21.65 ± 6.5) (P < 0.01). For herbal plants in Group B, the assessment score was higher for the Moodle group (28.68 ± 4.7) than for the control group (24.26 ± 7.7) (P < 0.01). The questionnaire results showed that students were satisfied with the Moodle platform. Conclusions: A specially designed Moodle module may be effective in augmenting the field trip for Chinese herbal medicine education.

Pedagogical Applications, Prospects, and Challenges of Blended Learning in Chinese Higher Education: A Systematic Review

“…Emotional engagement motivates students to engage in learning in ways that make them feel more satisfied when compared to other styles of learning ( Gao et al, 2020 ). Thus, personalized learning approaches have been linked with greater student satisfaction because they allow learners to learn at their own pace according to their individual capacity and learning level ( Li L. et al, 2020 ; Li X. et al, 2020 ).…”

Blended learning model towards vocational students’ learning outcomes: A scoping review

“…Classroom learning (F2F) combines online courses that help students hone their skills in digital literacy skills [56]. Students' opportunities to develop and explore knowledge widely through online learning have a significant impact on their learning outcomes [28], [29], [35], [38], [40], [45], [50].…”

Moodle Innovation Learning Technology for Medical Education: From Theory to Practice

“…Although online LMSs or social networks were used by higher education institutions in the educational process prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, due to the pandemic, universities were forced to adapt the educational process for exclusively online learning, most of them opting for the integration of online learning platforms such as Moodle [19]. Moodle has been successfully used in teaching anesthesiology and emergency medicine [20,21], surgery [22], thoracic surgery [23], acute medicine [24], urology [25,26], otolaryngology [27], dental radiology [28], thoracic surgery [23], blood transfusions [29], ophthalmology [30], primary health care and sexual and reproductive health services management [31], Chinese herbal medicine [32]. Via Moodle LMS courses on anatomy [33], physiology [34], medical physics [18], vaccination [35], tuberculosis [36], orthopedics [37], and even COVID-19 [38] were provided to medical students.…”

“…Not initially designed for teaching medicine-related subjects, Moodle, however, is globally used in this field, adding to improvement of a pandemic-related disruption in educational processes. The review shows that use of the Moodle LMS is widely adopted among medical universities worldwide in order to provide a non-stop educational process to undergraduate medical [35,20,33,25,53,32,30,21,54,38,15] and pharmacy [40,39] students under pandemic conditions. During 2019-2021 a number of online courses were provided to medical students in Universities of Austria [35,21], Germany [20,25,30,54], Italy [53], Turkey [38], China [32,15], and Nicaragua [33].…”

“…The review shows that use of the Moodle LMS is widely adopted among medical universities worldwide in order to provide a non-stop educational process to undergraduate medical [35,20,33,25,53,32,30,21,54,38,15] and pharmacy [40,39] students under pandemic conditions. During 2019-2021 a number of online courses were provided to medical students in Universities of Austria [35,21], Germany [20,25,30,54], Italy [53], Turkey [38], China [32,15], and Nicaragua [33]. The courses included training in hygiene, human and dental medicine, anatomy, urology, ophthalmology, anesthesiology, resuscitation, etc.…”