gms | German Medical Science

Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung (GMA)

16.11. - 18.11.2007, Hannover

Dementia 2 Go: The development and usability of a multimedia learning environment on personal digital assistants (PDAs) for nursing homes

Dementia 2 Go: Entwicklung und Nutzerfreundlichkeit einer multimedialen Lernumgebung für mobile Computer in Pflegeheimen

Poster

  • corresponding author Horst Christian Vollmar - Universität Witten/Herdecke, Witten, Deutschland
  • author Lauran H. Sandals - Miller School of Medicine, Miami, USA
  • author Syeda S. Qadri - Stein Gerontological Institute of the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Miami, USA
  • author David C. Freeman - Stein Gerontological Institute of the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Miami, USA
  • author James Jones - Stein Gerontological Institute of the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Miami, USA
  • author Marilyn Cheung - Stein Gerontological Institute of the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Miami, USA
  • author Rudy Picardo - Stein Gerontological Institute of the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Miami, USA
  • author Aaron McEntire - Stein Gerontological Institute of the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Miami, USA
  • author Ellen Brown - Stein Gerontological Institute of the Miami Jewish Home and Hospital for the Aged, Miami, USA
  • author Jorge G. Ruiz - Miller School of Medicine, Miami, USA
  • author Bernard A. Roos - Miller School of Medicine, Miami, USA

Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Medizinische Ausbildung - GMA. Hannover, 16.-18.11.2007. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2007. Doc07gma13

Die elektronische Version dieses Artikels ist vollständig und ist verfügbar unter: http://www.egms.de/de/meetings/gma2007/07gma013.shtml

Veröffentlicht: 14. November 2007

© 2007 Vollmar et al.
Dieser Artikel ist ein Open Access-Artikel und steht unter den Creative Commons Lizenzbedingungen (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.de). Er darf vervielfältigt, verbreitet und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden, vorausgesetzt dass Autor und Quelle genannt werden.


Gliederung

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Purpose: Blended learning has become a popular instructional methodology in medical education. One of the newest additions has been the use of PDAs to deliver medical information to physicians and nurses. We have adapted a variety of materials in creating a module for the mobile PDA learning environment. We then conducted pilot testing to evaluate the usability of this PDA-based module.

Methods: The materials for the PDAs came from different sources. Most of the multimedia content, like animations and video files, were extracted from established training DVDs for professionals in nursing homes. We created a prototype PDA module with nearly 1½ hours of viewable content. The module was evaluated by 7 nurses from a nursing home facility. Each nurse took part in a thirty-minute evaluation, consisting of a self-administered demographic questionnaire followed by a usability questionnaire conducted by an interviewer and an observer. The usability test consisted of two parts: a 28-item task-oriented questionnaire and a 15-item open-ended response questionnaire.

Results: The usability test was conducted with 7 nurses with an average age of 33.2 years (6 women, 1 man). All 7 participants had previously used the Internet but only one had prior experience with a PDA. Overall, we found from the task-oriented questionnaire that the participants had few problems using the PDA. They indicated that the module was clear and concise in regard to both text size and video length. Most of them recognized the main idea from the core content. However, participants who did not recognize the core content also did not realize that the module focused on communication.

Discussion: The need for efficient portable tools for just-in-time learning is growing. Our experiences during the development and testing of the dementia module for nurses demonstrated that PDAs might be a usable solution. Further research is needed to decide if PDAs can be used as a stand-alone approach or if they need to be blended with the content from Web sites, DVDs, or lectures.