Abstract
BackgroundThe digital revolution has led to a boom in the number of available online health care resources. To navigate these resources successfully, digital literacy education is required. Learners who can evaluate the reliability and validity of online health care information are likely to be more effective at avoiding potentially dangerous misinformation. In addition to providing health care education, massive open online courses (MOOCs) are well positioned to play a role in providing digital literacy education in this context.ObjectiveThis study focused on learners enrolled in a MOOC on cancer genomics. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a series of digital literacy–related activities within this course. This was an iterative study, with changes made to digital literacy–related activities in 4 of the 8 runs of the course.MethodsThis mixed methods study focused on learner engagement with the digital literacy–related activities, including the final course written assignment. Quantitative data including the number of references listed in each written assignment were compared between successive runs. Qualitative data in the form of learner comments on discussion forums for digital literacy–related tasks were evaluated to determine the impact of these educational activities.ResultsUsing the number of references included for each final course assignment as an indicator of digital literacy skills, the digital literacy–related activities in the final 2 runs were judged to be the most successful. We found a statistically significant increase in the number of references cited by learners in their final written assignments. The average number of references cited in Run 8 was significantly higher (3.5) than in Run 1 (1.8) of the MOOC (P=.001). Learner comments in Runs 7 and 8 showed that a poll in which learners were asked to select which of 4 online resources was reliable was effective in stimulating learner discussion about how to evaluate resource reliability.ConclusionsSimilar to many health care MOOCs, the course studied here had a heterogeneous group of learners, including patients (and their families), the public, health care students, and practitioners. Carefully designing a range of digital literacy–related activities that would be beneficial to this heterogenous group of learners enabled learners to become more effective at evaluating and citing appropriate online resources within their written assignments.
Highlights
Designing Digital Literacy Education to Equip Learners to Evaluate Online Health Care Information ResourcesDevelopments in online and digital media technologies are impacting the patient-health care relationship and creating a new area in which patients, health care students, and practitioners require guidance on how to operate
The learners are asked to generate a piece of work that allows the Creation of digital files, written assignlearners to articulate their understanding of the concept ments, peer reviewing assignments, writing new code, webpage, and blogs aMOOC: massive open online course
Our findings suggest improved referencing following the iterative educational interventions in the later runs, it would be beneficial to carry out a direct test of implementing all of our digital literacy interventions at once in a health care MOOC that currently lacks such guidance
Summary
Designing Digital Literacy Education to Equip Learners to Evaluate Online Health Care Information ResourcesDevelopments in online and digital media technologies are impacting the patient-health care relationship and creating a new area in which patients, health care students, and practitioners require guidance on how to operate. Designing Digital Literacy Education to Equip Learners to Evaluate Online Health Care Information Resources. The digital revolution has led to a boom in the number of available online health care resources To navigate these resources successfully, digital literacy education is required. Results: Using the number of references included for each final course assignment as an indicator of digital literacy skills, the digital literacy–related activities in the final 2 runs were judged to be the most successful. Designing a range of digital literacy–related activities that would be beneficial to this heterogenous group of learners enabled learners to become more effective at evaluating and citing appropriate online resources within their written assignments. These 8 separate runs of the MOOC took place between May 2014 and February 2019 on the FutureLearn platform This MOOC contains a brief written summary assignment (300 words), which was peer reviewed by other learners enrolled in the course. A total of 4 open-access papers were set and given as optional reading for this assignment; learners were encouraged to identify their own resources to include
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