The Effect of Electronic Portfolio on Nursing Students’ Self-regulation in Physiology Course

Introduction: The use of electronic technologies in teaching-learning process has become the integral part of education. The aim of this study was to explore the effect of using electronic portfolio on self-regulation strategies of nursing students in the physiology course. Methods: This paper is a quasi-experimental study with a pretest-posttest design and a control group. The statistical population consisted of all students of the nursing school of Malayer City in 2014-15 academic years. Thirty students were selected by means of convenient sampling method, and then randomly assigned into control and experimental groups. In order to measure self-regulated learning strategies, Pintrich and De Groot’s self-regulated learning strategies questionnaire whose validity and reliability was confirmed in previous studies was used. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive and inferential statistics (independent t-test). Results: Findings showed the improvement of self-regulation in the experimental group who learned the physiology course through electronic portfolio, as opposed to the control group who received routine teachings (t=4.58, p=0.001). Conclusion: Given the findings of the present study and effectiveness of using electronic portfolio in improving students’ self-regulation in the physiology course, it is recommended to implement this electronic technology in medical education.