Background: Students at universities are increasingly using PDAs personally and for work. At King’s College London students have access to their Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) (WebCT) through the College network and the Internet.
Methods: The study was to investigate the students’ use of wireless networked PDAs (donated by Toshiba) to access their VLEs in the Team Care clinic and for other programme tasks outside the Dental Institute. The project involved three phases of investigation: technical, educational and implementation. A simple cross over designed trial enabled half a student group of 12 to use the PDAs for 6 weeks, followed by the other half. The educational evaluation used pre and post trial questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The use of the VLE to access multiple media training material (including texts, images and webcasts) was monitored using WebCT.
Results: The technical evaluation showed that wireless access PDAs to College networks worked well. Lack of trailing wires and the portability were particularly appreciated features. The main drawback was battery life.
The results of the student interviews and the focus group discussions showed that two of the 12 students lacked confidence in using the PDA. There was a unanimous recommendation that a more joined up approach to using ICT in their undergraduate programme would be beneficial. All the students agreed that they would gain more benefit from the use of PDAs if they were to have ‘ownership’ of them over their entire 5-year programme.
Conclusion: The PDA was a highly acceptable mode of access to on-line education and will be introduced for all dental students. Further research is needed into how students use a range of new technologies in their undergraduate programmes.