The educational effects of mobile learning on medical sciences students: A systematic review in experimental studies

Introduction: The demand for mobile learning in the medicalsciences educational program is increasing. The present reviewstudy gathers evidence highlighted by the experimental studieson the educational effects of mobile learning for medical sciencesstudents.Methods: The study was carried out as a systematic literaturesearch published from 2007 to July 2017 in the databases PubMed/Medline, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature(CINAHL), Web of Knowledge (Thomson Reuters), EducationalResources and Information Center (ERIC), EMBASE (Elsevier),Cochrane library, PsycINFO and Google Scholar. To examinequality of the articles, a tool validated by the BEME Review wasemployed.Results: Totally, 21 papers entered the study. Three mainthemes emerged from the content of papers: (1) improvement instudent clinical competency and confidence, (2) acquisition andenhancing of students’ theoretical knowledge, and (3) students’positive attitudes to and perception of mobile learning. Level 2Bof Kirkpatrick hierarchy had been examined by all the papers andseven of them had reported two or more outcome levels, but level4 was not reported in the papers.Conclusion: Our review showed that the students of medical scienceshad positive response and attitudes to mobile learning. Moreover,implementation of mobile learning in medical sciences programmight lead to valuable educational benefits and improve clinicalcompetence and confidence along with theoretical knowledge,attitudes, and perception of mobile learning. The results indicatedthat mobile learning strategy in medical education can positivelyaffect learning in all three domains of Bloom’s Taxonomy.