Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Blended learning, an educational pedagogy that combines both traditional face-to-face teaching methods with technological innovations, is being implemented in training programs worldwide and specifically within the field of health professions education (HPE). Research indicates that usability, a multidimensional concept that is used to evaluate products and services, can be of paramount importance when evaluating the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with the use of blended learning programs (BLPs). Despite its importance, knowledge about the concept of usability and its consideration with respect to BLPs within the field of HPE remains lacking. Therefore, the purpose of my research was to develop a foundational understanding of how BLPs have generally been and are currently being evaluated in the field of HPE in relation to the concept of usability and its primary components (effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction). To do this, I conducted a scoping review guided by a well-established framework outlined by Arksey & O'Malley, 2005. This review initially identified 8626 studies of potential relevance. Through a rigorous screening process, 53 studies were included in this scoping review. Results from the quantitative and qualitative analyses of these studies identified a lack in the conceptual understanding of usability and its associated terms across the literature. The results suggest that there is no consensus among researchers regarding evaluation terminology or methodology in this context. This review presents several key findings that help to establish a fundamental understanding of BLP evaluations with respect to usability in the field of HPE. The findings of this study will be of paramount importance to stakeholders that plan on conducting evaluations of BLPs or developing new tools or frameworks to evaluate BLPs using the concept of usability in the context of HPE.