Do medical learning apps improve student performance?
We now live in a digital age where we turn to our phones for virtually everything. There is an app for almost anything we need; losing weight, getting fit, connecting with friends, improving our mental health and the list goes on. In fact, 88% of mobile time is spent on apps with 21% of millennials opening an app 50+ times per day.
Shaping the landscape for medical students
Smartphones and tablets haven’t just transformed our personal lives, they’ve reshaped the landscape of both healthcare and e-learning for medical students too. A research report by Markets and Markets found that the healthcare education market will be worth $125.2 billion by 2025. This is largely driven by the technological advancements in the healthcare industry, particularly the rapid growth in the online education and e-learning sector.
Medical students are using mobile apps in all aspects of learning about patient care. This includes history taking, examination, investigations, prescribing and clinical management. They are also relying on them to prepare for exams whilst using them as a tool to support learning in downtime or between clinics or lectures.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a large part to play in encouraging educational institutions to turn to digital learning solutions. As lecturers had to shift their teaching online and students had to learn remotely, more and more of them were relying on apps to fulfil their learning needs. This left many educators wondering how effective they were in actually making a difference to a student's medical knowledge.
Proving Capsule’s effectiveness
With so many medical learning apps saturating the market and little to no research to back up their claims of improving medical knowledge, we wanted to demonstrate Capsule’s effectiveness as a comprehensive study tool. Capsule was created with Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS) and one of the researchers - Jonathan Sadler undertook a study to investigate Capsule’s ability to improve student performance. He wanted to explore the relationship between higher Capsule app usage and decile ranking for students.
The method
Sadler analysed Capsule’s readily available data which was collected from medical students in their final two years of medical school. Following the medical student’s final exams, Jonathan accessed the Capsule data and the student’s decile ranking which was given to them throughout their time at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. The Capsule data included the number of cases completed at the end of each year, the overall number of cases completed and the combined mean average score for all completed cases.
Students who used Capsule more, performed better overall
The study found that students who completed more cases in Capsule tended to score higher marks for the cases they completed and the students who scored higher marks on their Capsule cases tended to be part of a stronger decile. So to put it simply;
“Students who used Capsule more frequently were more likely to increase their medical knowledge and more likely to have a higher decile ranking.”
How does Capsule improve students' overall performance?
Capsule is distinctly different to other medical learning platforms because it focuses on improving medical knowledge holistically, not just for medical exams. Capsule enables students to rehearse their investigation, diagnosis and management through realistic scenarios and instant feedback, ready to apply on placement.
Our competitors align their questions to follow particular exam formats and whilst this is good for passing exams it’s ineffective at improving in-depth medical knowledge and diagnostic decision-making skills. Both of which are essential when working on the ward in a real-life setting.
Capsule offers 700+ realistic scenarios with 3,700 questions all of which are created by leading medical educators and doctors. These are mapped to the entire medical curriculum as opposed to a single exam. Best of all, in-depth feedback is given to students for every question they answer incorrectly, this helps them to fully understand why they failed and to strengthen their knowledge and retain the information for next time.
Capsule offers limitless possibilities
Capsule collects in-depth user activity which is always readily available to be analysed. You can test out all kinds of different hypotheses and identify some amazing insights. Jonathan recommends looking at data in the following areas;
Are students repeating a particular set of questions? This is a good indicator of whether the questions are useful or if the subject is particularly difficult.
Which subjects are used the most and are all the questions in that subject area being completed? This signifies which ones are most useful to students.
What are the usage patterns? If students are only using it before exams, explain the benefits of using it throughout the entire year.
The findings from this investigation point strongly towards the conclusion that Capsule does, in fact, improve a student’s overall performance. This means that the platform can be, and should be considered as an all-encompassing supportive learning tool in the medical learning space; for clinical placements, additional lecture support, ALL exam preparation and career support beyond educational courses.
If you need help embedding Capsule into your medical curriculum or you need further support to make full use of the analytics, get in touch with one of the team.
Are you new to Capsule?
If you’re looking for a clinical case-based learning resource that drives knowledge beyond the exams, try Capsule. Speak to one of our experts to discuss any questions that you have and find out how your school can benefit from the leading medical learning platform.
Please find the original research paper on the BMJ - What is the impact of Apps in medical education?.
