Medical students’ perceptions of using mobile phones for their English study

The authors conducted a needs analysis to investigate their medical students’ needs and preferences for using mobile devices for their English study. The analysis showed the students’ expectations of mobile learning were very high and two-thirds of them were interested in building medical English terminology through mobile learning. Then, the authors created mobile learning content designed mainly for helping their students review medical terminology. The content was delivered to 242 students twice a week during the period from July 2013 to January 2014. The authors then conducted a survey on their students’ perceptions of the content delivered. It revealed that half of the students found the content useful for their English study and about two-thirds of them found the content level to be appropriate. However, the log analysis showed that only an average of 9.5 % of the students worked on the medical quizzes. This result suggests that achieving a high degree of student involvement in their autonomous mobile learning is difficult and it is necessary for teachers to further investigate ways to enhance students’ motivation for mobile learning. Pages 172-178

Verbal and Nonverbal Modality Effects on Improssions of Political Candidates

The experiment examined the role of presentation modality in evaluations of George Bush and Al Gore from the Presidential debates in the 2000 campaign. In the experiment, 295 Japanese subjects were presented selected segments from the debate in either the normal audiovisual condition of in a visual-only condition. The results showed that candidates in audiovisual modality were rated more favorably than in visual-only modality. Bush was judged significantly more favorably than Gore in the visual-only modality than in the audiovisual modality. Gore was rated more leader-like than Bush

Medical students’ needs and readiness for e-learning: Survey results at Shimane University, Japan

Japanese medical professionals are increasingly using English when presenting papers at conferences and communicating with medical staff and patients. Since 2008, the authors have been trying to improve overall impact of their medical English lessons at Shimane University, Japan, by the efficient use of e-learning (Iwata, Tamaki & Clayton, 2011). At the same time, the authors have been conducting surveys to investigate their students’ needs and readiness for e-learning as these are crucial prerequisites for successful implementation of e-learning (Govindasamy, 2001). Results from 5-year-long surveys on students’ needs for e-learning show that most of the medical students prefer to use computers or the Internet for their English study. Results on computer competence to investigate students’ technical readiness for e-learning show that a majority of students are confident and competent in storing information on computer or disk and searching for information using a Web browser. However, student’s technical knowledge was rather weak with a significant number of them feeling uncomfortable and incompetent when trying to reconnect to the internet after being disconnected and when an error message occurs. This indicates that the provision of on-going technical support could be regarded as a crucial service to enable continuing success of learners in an e-learning environment