gms | German Medical Science

Introduction: Mobile e-learning is increasingly used in undergraduate medical education. However, high costs and complexity to develop software applications (apps) for mobile devices limit their use and prevalence in higher education. Here we present a novel internet platform for educators to independently create and manage teaching apps without the requirement of programming skills or additional software.

Methods: Eteachingapps.com was developed at Technische Universität München (TUM) based on Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP) as server-side scripting language and a My Structured Query Language (MySQL) database management system.

Results: Educators can create their own teaching app and instantly edit its content online at http://www.eteachingapps.com. Students can access the apps with a webbrowser on any internet-enabled device (smartphones, tables-PCs or laptops). A pilot study to evaluate functionality and user acceptance conducted with undergraduate medical students and lectures at TUM showed above average evaluation results.

Discussion/conclusion: Eteachingapps.com is a novel platform to independently create, edit and manage teaching apps for higher education that was well received by students and educators. As a non-commercial alternative to conventional apps, it will likely help to foster mobile e-learning in undergraduate medical education.