Screening of Medical Students’ Intention to Practice Mobile – Learning in Malaysia

@#Introduction: The twenty-first-century learning is adopting the student-centered learning techniques and the teachers are mainly facilitators to direct the process of learning and so social media and mobile applications became an important learning platform. Mobile learning (M-learning) is the practice of learning activities through a portable device such as cellular phone or a personal digital assistant. The aim of this research is to screen the medical students’ intention toward the adoption of M-learning and to determine factors affecting the intentions of the medical students to practice M-learning. Methods: A cross-sectional study among medical students was performed through a questionnaire based on the Theory of Reasoned Action and the Technology Acceptance Model. The study included 129 students in different stages of the medical study. Results: Results showed that the factors affecting the students’ inten¬tion to practice M-learning include the students’ attitude, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and availability of resources. In the current sample 82.7% of students are already using M-Learning; 41.7% are using it for assessment, 22.8% are using it for learning and 35.5% are using it for both. Conclusion: It was concluded that most medical students have higher intention to adopt M-learning and they are mostly using it for assessment purposes rather than in learning.

Effect of Cigarette Smoking on the Academic Achievement Among Management and Science University Students

@#Introduction: Cigarette smoking is showing an increasing prevalence among university students nowadays. Smoking includes the act of smoking cigarette containing tobacco and/or other ingredients or just inhaling the cigarette smoke. Smoking has many known physical side effects that include psychological or cognitive effects. Therefore, the aim of this research is to identify the effect of cigarette smoking on the academic achievement among university students. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 136 students including 113 male and 23 female aged 18 to 29 years from Management and Science University with 30 non smoker students. The questionnaire included items about the social demographic characteristics, smoking status, the study styles and the academic achievement of the participants. A frequency statistics, descriptive statistics and chi square test were used to analyze the collected data using SPSS version 25. Results: Among the smoker students, 51.5% came to class early, 80.8% attend classes regularly, 49.3% studied on weekends and 39.7% planned sufficient time to study for exam. Mean CGPA for smoker students is 2.6. Conclusion: Smoking is proven to be associated with low academic performance among university student.

Study of the Pattern of Cell Phone Usage Associated With Side Effects Among University Students: Case Study in a Malaysian University

@#Introduction: Cell phone is a device that has been used almost every day for all age groups. It connects everyone and everything around the world as it provides various social platforms. However, not many people realized that cell phone is a source of non-ionizing electromagnetic waves that can be associated with various physical effects. Therefore, the aim of this research is to identify the physical side effects associated with exposure to the electromagnetic waves emitted by cell phone use and to detect if these effects are associated with specific pattern of use. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 166 participants randomly selected from university students. Results: showed that those suffering side effects associated with cell phone usage are usually using more than one cell phone (79%) since about 5 – 10 years (41.9%) for more than 5 hours daily (65.7%) for entertainment (34.3%) and making about 1-5 calls daily (41%) with average call duration 1 – 30 min (56.2%). 66.7% of them started using cell phone at age 7 – 12 years old, mostly handheld (61%), at their right side (40%), at all times of the day (64.8%). Most common side effects associated with cell phone usage include ear pain (52.4%), headache (79.5%), fatigue, anxiety or insomnia (57.8%), tremors and eye pain beside statistically significant (P<0.05) complain of dry mouth (56.6%) and/or bad odor mouth (46.4%). Conclusion: There is a specific pattern associated with occurrence of side effects due to cell phone use.