The Impact of Multimedia Course Enhancements on Student Learning Outcomes (Report‪)‬

This project compared two sections of the same online course taught by the same instructor in 2007 and 2008, to determine whether the changes resulted in tangible improvements in student performance or attitude. Consumer Health Informatics (CHI) is a masters-level, fully web-based course. Students from the Indiana University Schools of Library & Information Science, Nursing, and Informatics examine Internet-based and telehealth models for delivering health information to consumers. After being taught once, the CHI course was upgraded with support from an internal university course development grant. The grant sought to integrate multimedia applications and multimodal instruction (text, visuals, audio, etc.) into the course to improve student learning and promote more meaningful engagement with classmates, and with course activities and materials. After delivering the course in spring 2007 and the revised course in spring 2008, the author undertook qualitative and quantitative analyses of online course materials to determine whether student performance and attitudes improved between the two generations, and if so, to what extent. Multiple data sources were used, including: (1) grades on three major assignments, (2) course participation scores, (3) course evaluation scores, and (4) a content analysis of randomly selected weekly discussion forum conversations. Together, these data provided a snapshot of students' engagement and course learning outcomes. Qualitative content analysis and statistical comparisons of quantitative data showed significant improvements from 2007 to 2008 in the level of students' engagement in course materials and with peers in discussion forums. Students' attitudes and perceptions recorded in end-of-the-semester evaluations also showed significant improvement. These results illustrate the efficacy of multimodal learning techniques in virtual education. Trends in the Distance and Online Learning Literature