Author:

Keywords:

Social Sciences, Education & Educational Research, learning effectiveness, media design, multimedia, blended learning, instructional media, practical skills education, nursing skills training, asynchronous learning

Abstract:

This practice based research on effectiveness and efficiency of learning media design is meant to provide an answer to the professional bachelor programs nursing of three affiliated university colleges of the Catholic University of Leuven and one associate degree program for the optimization of their blended learning approach for the practical skills component of the programs. In particular we want to find the most optimal media design for students to prepare themselves independently for the practicum nursing skills. This replaces the demonstration of the skill that is normally done by the lecturer during the contact time of the practicum. We compare three stratified groups of hundred students. Each group prepares themselves for the real practicum of the next day by means of a different online medium: a short video with limited narration (spoken information: “what”), a long video with elaborate narration (more detailed spoken information: “what”, “how”, “why”), and a multimedia interactive learning module with learner control. We find supportive results for the decision to augment narration in the instruction videos from limited to elaborate narration. Integrating learning objects into a multi media module with learner control however, does not influence the learning outcomes/results (learning effectiveness) nor the time spent on the lab preparation assignment (learning efficiency). The final aim is to decide on basis of a cost-effectiveness evaluation on the future media design to be used in both the pre-service and post-service nursing programs.