Measuring the quality of clinical skills mobile apps for student learning: Systematic search, analysis, and comparison of two measurement scales

Abstract

Background: Mobile apps are widely used in health professions, which increases the need for simple methods to determine the quality of apps. In particular, teachers need the ability to curate high-quality mobile apps for student learning. Objective: This study aims to systematically search for and evaluate the quality of clinical skills mobile apps as learning tools. The quality of apps meeting the specified criteria was evaluated using two measures—the widely used Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS), which measures general app quality, and the Mobile App Rubric for Learning (MARuL), a recently developed instrument that measures the value of apps for student learning—to assess whether MARuL is more effective than MARS in identifying high-quality apps for learning. Methods: Two mobile app stores were systematically searched using clinical skills terms commonly found in medical education and apps meeting the criteria identified using an approach based on PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. A total of 9 apps were identified during the screening process. The apps were rated independently by 2 reviewers using MARS and MARuL. Results: The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) for the 2 raters using MARS and MARuL were the same (MARS ICC [two-way]=0.68; P