E-learning Principles and Critical Thinking Elements

Clark and Mayer (2011) present the following principles in their text E-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven guidelines for Consumer and Designer of Multimedia Learning:  Multimedia, Contiguity, Modality, Redundancy, Coherence, Personalization, Segmenting, Pre-training, and Worked Examples.

Pre-training

            Improving Patient Satisfaction (IPS) is a course for current environmental employees with experience.  The lesson is not a basic cleaning course, nor an introduction.  IPS presents an opportunity to enhance quality and improve outcomes.

Segmentation

            Each lesson retains a compartmentalized design and executed individually.  Current corporate training uses the concept of “morning huddles” and this course fits specifically into that modality.  Instructors can sort the 11 lessons to match current events or needs.  Cleaners could critically analyze their current actions and the effect upon the patients.

Personalization

            The entire presentation focusses upon the actions of the individual.  From the first slide, the student realizes that each segment deals with personal accountability and self-improvement.  Contextually, the introduction places the entire lesson into focus for the participant.  He or she realizes that HCAHPS is not just a score, but a reflection of their individual daily efforts.

Multimedia

            Improving Patient Satisfaction incorporates sound, sight, action, and graphics.  This self-paced multimedia presentation reaches most learner types.  The accompanying photographs depict situations and the optional narration reinforces the written words.

Contiguity

            The placement of word near the objects appears often in this presentation.  In the very diverse housekeeping industry, images, and words vary among cultures and age groups.  The slides employ a very close relationship between pictures and language.

Redundancy

            Not only are words and graphics employed by the course, but also audio instructions interjected.  The lessons have repetitive messages but not overly redundant.  A solid final review ties the entire message together.

Coherence

            Simple and straightforward narration accompanies the slideshow.  There is no extraneous music or sound effects to distract the message.  The student or presenter has the option to disregard the narration or present the entire lesson through static slides.

Worked Examples

            The final review slide sums up the entire message.  Through the use of a worked example, the employee learns that the actions of the previous slides add to the product—improved patient satisfaction.