Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Oct 4, 2019
Date Accepted: Nov 13, 2019
Effectiveness of Blended Learning compared to Traditional Learning in Medical Education: a systematic review and meta-analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Blended learning has grown rapidly to be usually utilized in education. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of this learning has not been completely quantitatively synthetized and evaluated on knowledge outcomes in health education.
Objective:
The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of blended learning in health education versus traditional learning.
Methods:
We performed a systematic review on the effectiveness of blended learning on health education in Medline from 1990 to July 2019. We independently selected studies, extracted data, assessed risk of bias and then compared the information in pairs. All pooled analyses were based on random-effect models
Results:
A total of 56 trials (9943 participants) assessing several supports of blended learning, met our inclusion criteria. 3 studies investigated offline supports, 7 studies investigated digital supports, 34 studies investigated online supports, 8 studies investigated computer-assisted instruction (CAI) supports, and 5 virtual patients (VP) supports for blended learning. The pooled analysis comparing all blended learning to traditional learning shows significant results for knowledge outcomes (standardized mean difference [SMD]: 1.07, 95% CI [0.85; 1.28], I2=94.3%). Similar results were observed for online, CAI and VP supports but offline and digital supports were not significant.
Conclusions:
From this review, blended learning shows a consistent positive effect compared to traditional learning in health education. Further studies are needed to confirm these results and explore the utility of different design variants of blended learning.
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