Establishing Best Practices for Effective Online Learning Modules: a Single Institution Study

Abstract

To reduce lecture hours, medical schools turned to online teaching modalities to re-engage students and reduce cognitive overload and burnout. Importantly, developing effective online learning modules expands the teaching product toolbox and enhances schedule flexibility. Various authorship tools are available, but there is a significant need for faculty development to successfully build these novel resources. We performed this study to establish best practices for creating effective online learning modules. Our mixed-methods survey generated data on student perceptions for overall effectiveness of 19 online learning modules employed in a single course of the first year medical curriculum. These surveys also obtained data on additional parameters to assess their impact on overall effectiveness. Our data revealed that transitioning content from a lecture format to an interactive online exercise can be challenging because online instructors no longer have a real-time presence to assess and redirect learning on an ad hoc basis. Thus, the manner in which an online module is organized, clarity of provided written information, and helpfulness of figures all correlated strongly with student perceptions of overall effectiveness of an online module. In contrast, formative feedback and brief audio/visual lecture capture clips, while viewed very positively by students, appeared more as independent variables correlating less well with overall effectiveness. These data will help guide faculty development as medical education transitions from traditional lectures to an increasing number of online learning resources.