“Alexa, open medical quiz” – Development of an educational voice assistant quiz as well as a Moodle quiz for the pharmaceutical representative exam and evaluation of the different learning outcomes

Aim and Research Question(s)

The purpose of this thesis was to determine whether speech assistants are suitable for learning medical and pharmaceutical topics for the pharmaceutical representative exam, and if so, whether Moodle or the speech assistant is more appropriate. RQ 1: Is a developed voice assistant quiz or a Moodle quiz better for achieving a higher learning curve more quickly related to topics of the pharmaceutical representative exam? RQ 2: Is it possible to study medical and pharmaceutical topics with a speech assistant quiz?

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of e-Learning. The author's company, Panapharma, already offers e-Learning tools like Moodle for preparing for the pharmaceutical representative exam, but they bring some drawbacks, such as the lack of social interactions. To counteract such problems, voice assistants, like Alexa, are recommended.

Methods

20 new single-choice quiz questions were created based on topics of the pharmaceutical representative exam. A Moodle quiz and a voice assistant quiz were developed and further tested with two separate user groups. Each user participated in the quiz three times over a span of two weeks, with the same time interval between each test for all participants. One group completed the Moodle quiz, while the other group took the voice assistant quiz. Subsequently, all responses were evaluated, and learning curves were generated for both groups to facilitate comparison. An additional questionnaire gathered demographic information about the users.

Results and Discussion

The speech assistant group consistently achieved higher scores than the Moodle group in each quiz session, but the Moodle group showed greater improvement. Fig. 1: Average score per quiz run per group (Alexa Vs. Moodle)

Conclusion

The findings show no statistically significant difference between the efficacy of Moodle and the speech assistant regarding rapid improvement in the learning curve for the pharmaceutical representative exam topics. As both groups improved their average score with each quiz run, both tools can be used for studying medical topics through quizzing. Despite the outcome, study limitations must be considered.

References

[1] S.Rimsha, “What Does the Future Hold for a Surgical Trainee? This Lockdown Is Not a Letdown Yet: A Survey on Moodle Learning Management System as a Part of Blended Learning During COVID-19 Pandemic,”