Department of Medicine

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Browsing Department of Medicine by Subject "Acid-base imbalances -- Computer-aided design"

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    Development and usability evaluation of a multimedia e-learning resource for electrolyte and acid-base disorders
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2015-03) Davids, Mogamat Razeen; Halperin, Mitchell L.; Chikte, Usuf M. E.; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dept. of Medicine. General Internal Medicine.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: We have developed an innovative multimedia e-learning resource, the Electrolyte Workshop, to provide students and clinicians with instruction and the opportunity for simulated practice in managing electrolyte and acid-base disorders. Our teaching approach is built around relevant physiology and makes use of real cases and storytelling to engage the learner. We have documented the challenges encountered during the development process and have made recommendations for the managing of similar projects. While there are many factors that must be in place to ensure successful e-learning, this dissertation focuses on an important but under-appreciated factor, namely the usability of the computer interface. Usability describes how easy technology interfaces are to use and is routinely evaluated and optimized in the software development industry. This is not yet the case with e-learning, especially in the area of medical education. Poor usability limits the potential benefit of educational resources, as this means that learners will struggle with the interface as well as with the challenges of the content presented. A comprehensive usability evaluation of our Electrolyte Workshop was completed. This included testing with typical end-users, where data were collected via standardized questionnaires and by observing and analysing their interactions with our application. We employed heuristic evaluation as an additional approach and assembled a panel of experts to evaluate our application against a set of heuristics, or principles of good interface design. Many serious usability problems were identified, thus severely limiting the potential educational impact of our Electrolyte Workshop. There was a striking disconnect between the objective measures of usability and self-reported questionnaire data. Our user-testing data make a useful contribution to the debate on how many users are required to find most of the usability problems in an interface. Heuristic evaluation proved to be a very efficient approach. However, both user testing and heuristic evaluation detected serious problems which were missed with the other method. These evaluations informed a comprehensive revision of our application and we could then compare the original with an optimized version in a randomized trial. We found large improvements in objective usability measures, which are likely to increase the satisfaction and motivation of learners. There were similar scores on measures of learning. This was not surprising as our participants were all relatively high-knowledge learners and not novices as regards the subject matter. Our study clearly indicates that the usability evaluation of e-learning resources is critical, and provides an example of how clinician-teachers can improve the usability of the resources they develop. Usability should be evaluated as a routine part of the development and implementation of e-learning materials, modules and programmes. This should start with the earliest versions of the resource, when making changes is easier and less costly. We have demonstrated that a combination of methods should be employed and have highlighted the utility of heuristic evaluation. An iterative approach should be followed, with several cycles of testing and re-design. User testing should always include the study of objective usability measures and not rely only on self-reported measures of user satisfaction.