A language application for Health Science students : a study on user experience

Abstract

South Africa is home to 11 official languages and speakers of these languages communicate with one another on a daily basis. Such multilingual communication occurs throughout the country, especially at hospitals and clinics. Every so often, someone needs to visit a healthcare facility and then it is difficult for the patient to find a health professional that speaks a language he/she understands. Some universities in South Africa, including the University of Pretoria, address this matter by teaching students an additional language to enable them to communicate with their patients. This study aimed to assist the University of Pretoria in this endeavour by providing three custom-designed, mobile-assisted Sepedi language learning applications to students from the Faculty of Health Sciences enrolled for the Sepedi language module. The students used the applications as supplementary tools for their studies over nine weeks and then completed a questionnaire on user experience. The questionnaire was used to determine whether the students perceived the mobile applications to be useful supplementary tools to their studies and whether they had a clear preference for a specific application. The results of this user experience study report a positive response to the applications, including strong preferences made by the students who participated in the study.