The Effect of Virtual Education on Midwifery Students' Knowledge of Child Sexual Training

BACKGROUND: Midwives, as the first family trainers, play a significant role in the proper formation of children's sexual identity. Virtual education allows flexible learning for an unlimited number of students. This study aims to examine the influence of virtual education on midwifery students' knowledge of child sexual training. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was conducted as a clinical trial from March 2015 to March 2016, on 75 midwifery students studying in two state universities in Tehran, Iran. By flipping a coin, universities were randomly divided into intervention and control groups. Through census sampling, all students of one university were recruited as the intervention group (40 students) and those of the other university were recruited as the control group (35 students). The education offered to the intervention group included eight 1-h virtual education sessions consisting of PowerPoint, audio and video files. Both groups' knowledge was assessed before and 3 months after the completion of the course. A researcher-made questionnaire was used to measure students' knowledge based on certain scenarios. T-pair and t-test (p < 0.05) were used for within-group and between-group analyses, respectively. RESULTS: The mean score difference of sexual knowledge before and after education was 17.60 and 1.59 in the intervention and control groups, respectively; an independent t-test showed a significantly higher level in the intervention group (t(73) = 6.86, p = 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: When in-class learning in the field of child sex training is not feasible for various constraints, virtual education can be used as a feasible and effective method.