The Impact of Learning through Management System vs. Learning through Experience Platform on Exam Results of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

The upheaval time of COVID19 highlighted the importance of an effective way of teaching English to the frontline healthcare workers such as medical doctors and researchers with different digital divide status, particularly in nonEnglish speaking countries because they were first hand users of critical pandemic related information in mostly English articles published online by scientific journals. This study attempted to investigate the pedagogical effects of utilizing the two main User Generated Content (UGC) platforms in Elearning, namely LMS vs. LXP, on the results of the Electronic Ministry of Health Language Examinations (EMHLE) among Iranian English for Medical Purposes (EMP) learners across their digital divide status (digital natives vs. digital immigrants) during the COVID19 pandemic. A series of focus group Einterviews were conducted to determine the reasons behind the lowest scores among the participants and to find out possible suggestions for success in high stake E-tests. To this end, 272 EMP learners who were users of LMS and LXP were conveniently selected from a university of medical science to participate in this sequential explanatory mixed method research. The results of descriptive and inferential statistics showed that the LXP group outperformed the LMS one in the results of EMHLE. Moreover, the digital natives obtained higher scores than the digital immigrants in both groups but the difference was not significant in the LXP. The findings of the E-interviews were thematically analyzed and discussed. The findings of this study might offer practical and realistic benefits to the whole EMP community, particularly policymakers for the post-COVID19 era.