Feasibility of Medical Education through Email: Darsnameh e - Learning System as a National Pattern

Introduction: while internet and web could bridge over time and place barriers of educa-tion, some websites developed educational programs in different fields. The nation-wide Darsnameh e-Learning System is one of the accepted and popular services basically for ICT education and other miscellaneous topics. Here, we try to collect the characteristics of this system to assess the feasibility of its adaptation for medical education. Methods: we considered five aspects (infrastructure, registration, content, timing, and user) and two criteria (user-friendliness and reliability) to assess the adaptation of Darsnameh model for medical education. Assessment team consisted of a software engineer, a medical librarian, and a medical education expert each of them voluntarily and optionally registered in one of the Darsnameh courses and finished it. Passing each course took 43 days on average. Three two-hour meetings were held to assess the system in group discussions. All discus-sions were recorded and their contents were analyzed to form the assessment concepts and categories. To determine adoptability of the system for medical education, scores of 0-7 was considered. Results: in Categories of infrastructure, registration, content, timing, and users were scored 6, 2, 6, 4, and 4 respectively. Also, user-friendliness and reliability criteria were scored 6 and 1. Except reliability criteria, other characteristics were consi-dered as adoptable for medical education. But reliability of the registration information, content, exam results, course certification, and affiliation of developers remained unreliable. Conclusion: implementation of e-learning for medical education through email could be considered as a new developmental approach, however because of limitations of current study, it should be evaluated for a large number of subjects such as general practitioners.