Comparison of willingness to mobile learning in medical sciences students in before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak

Mobile learning as a paradigm shift in the context of e-learning has become particularly important after the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak and shift from the conventional methods to digital learning in universities. This study endeavored to study the willingness to mobile learning in medical sciences students in before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak.

This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in the academic years 2020-2021 with the participation of 358 students. Data were collected through a standard questionnaire of willingness to mobile learning two times in the study before the outbreak of COVID-19 outbreak in Iran on February 2020 (T1) and again in May 2021 (T2).

The mean scores of willingness to mobile learning at two rounds were 162.58±30.29 and 176.55±28.56, respectively, which was significant (t=14.36, P=0.001). In addition, there was a significant difference between the mean of self-management (before 33.41, after 36.8) (t=15.51, P=0.001), attitude (before 19.46, after 21.63) (t=15.99, P=0.001), pedagogical use (before 33.66, after 36.65) (t=8.71, P=0.001), efficacy of mobile learning (before 6.81, after 7.89) (t=15.19, P=0.001) and behavioral intention (before 7.81, after 10.18) (t=22.93, P=0.001) in both rounds. However, there was no significant difference between the mean of the dimensions technophilia, perceive attraction, and perceived ease in the two measurement steps (P= 0.001).

The willingness to mobile learning has increased after about 1.5 years of the beginning of the COVID-19 disease outbreak in medical students, which indicates the high acceptance and desire of students to mobile learning. Therefore, the use of mobile technologies for learning purposes during the COVID-19 to fill the study gap and its continuation in the post corona is recommended as a complementary method in education.