Effectiveness of Smartphone Application in Histology Practice

Abstract

In recent years, the use of smartphone applications for education is increasing. Although applications are being used for various educational aspects such as exams, the study of medical educational application is lacking. This study aims to investigate the effect of educational applications on medical education by analyzing the utility of and satisfaction with educational applications for histology courses in medical schools. The researcher employed an application called “BAND” that can be used to upload and share microscopic figures taken during histology lectures. A total of 82 first-grade students from Keimyung University Medical School who participated in this study expressed satisfaction with using “BAND”. A total of 68 (83%) students were satisfied with learning histology through the application, and 72 (88%) students indicated that using the application was greatly helpful for the organizational practice test and expressed overall satisfaction with the application use. This benefit was because of easy contact (29.9%), searching ability (29.9%), and memory with humorous methods by friends (20.7%). And it application is most helpful during epithelium section (20.8%) and student want to use this application for anatomy (40.3%) or microbiology (38.8%) practices. The study results imply the need for further research so that the educational application can be used in various medical education fields in the future.