Abstract:

The interactivity of the educational content is unmatchable in face-to-face training. Unlike traditional attendance training, where the interaction is between the teacher and the student, interactivity in e-learning can be realized through the content of the course and through the functionality of the learning management system (LMS).

Moodle is a widespread LMS, comprising the major contemporary concepts in the theory of learning: constructivism, constructionism, and social constructivism. It offers a lot of functionalities to develop student-oriented learning. This paper deals with the development of interactive learning content for healthcare students in the lesson module in Moodle. The study aimed at the development and evaluation of the electronic resources, and survey the students’ opinion on the applicability of the interactive lessons.

The study was conducted through a direct anonymous survey containing 23 indicators, rated on a six-point scale - from weak 2.00 to excellent 6.00. The indicators evaluate the goals, content, images, questions, references, navigation, and students' opinion of the lesson – if they like it, how far it allows distance learning, and whether it is more appropriate for self-study than the passive resource. It had two stages:
1. Creating pilot versions of lessons and their evaluation by the students.
2. Learning units redesign and second evaluation.
Three lessons were developed. Each lesson was evaluated with a separate questionnaire.

We followed the principles of web content visibility and readability in the design of the lessons. We tried to keep the page content short, we used colour tagging to focus attention.

The overall rating of the first round was 5.27. Statistically significant differences in scores were obtained for the indicators examining the difficulty, volume and readability of the content; clarity and logical structure of the lesson; the sufficiency and informative nature of the images and the volume and clarity of the questions.

We refined the lessons according to the feedback. We received a total score of 5.40 in the second evaluation.

We found that the refinement of the design of the lessons in terms of the amount of text on each page and questions structure, not only led to the expected statistically significantly higher scores of the relevant indicators. Changes were found to indirectly lead to a clearer understanding of the lessons’ objectives and greater clarity in the logic of the presentation. The learning unit is an integrated whole, in which the quality of each element contributes to the overall perception of the lesson, and to its clear structure.

Optimal format parameters were outlined: non-serif font, more images, short pages (about 400 – 500 words), up to 4 attempts to answer a question, the number of correct answers to be announced, enabling continuing without giving a correct answer, the duration of the lesson should be about 20 – 30 minutes.
The students explicitly made clear in their feedback that they would like more visuals integrated into the content.

In free comments in the assessment sheets, students said that the interactive material was interesting, engaging, and student-oriented. For many of them, it is the right option to support their self-study, because it gives them the freedom to study where and when it is convenient for them. The majority of the participants in the survey thought they could study distantly with interactive lessons.

Keywords:

Moodle, interactive lessons, e-learning design.