Comparative Study of Two Traditional and Microlearning Methods in Teaching Drug-Loaded Nanoliposomes to Pharmacy Students

Introduction: Microlearning is one of the new educational methods that is presented in small units in a short period of time. The aim of this study was to compare two methods of traditional teaching and microlearning in the teaching of nanoliposomes for pharmacy students. Methods: This experimental study was conducted in 1402 on 40 pharmacy students of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Students were randomly divided into two groups of traditional education and microlearning. The intervention group received educational content including methods of manufacturing, drug loading, and characterization of pharmaceutical nanoliposomes as microlearning, and the control group also received the common liposome textbook that contains educational content in written form. Educational content was prepared and edited using educational video design software. After the implementation of the intervention, a researcher-made test was used to evaluate the learning in the two groups. The QUIS questionnaire was evaluated regarding validity and reliability and used to measure users' satisfaction with microlearning educational packages. The normality of the distribution of scores was done with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and the comparison of two groups with the Mann-Whitney test. Data were analyzed using SPSS. Findings: A total of 40 pharmacy students participated in this study. 20 of them were in the traditional education group (14 women and 6 men) and 20 people were in the microlearning group (12 women and 8 men). There was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of age and grade point average. The results showed that the average scores of the two groups had no statistically significant difference (P=0.381). Also, the overall satisfaction level of students with the educational content was 8.07 (out of 10 marks). The highest score (8.7) was related to the ease of working with the educational package and the sequence of demonstration parts in the educational package, and the lowest score (5.9) was related to the speed of the educational videos. Conclusion: The results of the present study showed that the use of microlearning content in the field of teaching the methods of making liposomes for students, although it did not lead to an increase in students' grades, but it brought about the satisfaction of the majority of them. The microlearning package can be made available to the audience at any time and place, and this makes them satisfied.