Department of Surgery, Northwestern University-Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Med Educ. 2011 Aug;45(8):818-26. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.03988.x.
The Association of American Medical Colleges' Institute for Improving Medical Education's report entitled 'Effective Use of Educational Technology' called on researchers to study the effectiveness of multimedia design principles. These principles were empirically shown to result in superior learning when used with college students in laboratory studies, but have not been studied with undergraduate medical students as participants.
A pre-test/post-test control group design was used, in which the traditional-learning group received a lecture on shock using traditionally designed slides and the modified-design group received the same lecture using slides modified in accord with Mayer's principles of multimedia design. Participants included Year 3 medical students at a private, midwestern medical school progressing through their surgery clerkship during the academic year 2009-2010. The medical school divides students into four groups; each group attends the surgery clerkship during one of the four quarters of the academic year. Students in the second and third quarters served as the modified-design group (n=91) and students in the fourth-quarter clerkship served as the traditional-design group (n=39).
Both student cohorts had similar levels of pre-lecture knowledge. Both groups showed significant improvements in retention (p<0.0001), transfer (p<0.05) and total scores (p<0.0001) between the pre- and post-tests. Repeated-measures anova analysis showed statistically significant greater improvements in retention (F=10.2, p=0.0016) and total scores (F=7.13, p=0.0081) for those students instructed using principles of multimedia design compared with those instructed using the traditional design.
Multimedia design principles are easy to implement and result in improved short-term retention among medical students, but empirical research is still needed to determine how these principles affect transfer of learning. Further research on applying the principles of multimedia design to medical education is needed to verify the impact it has on the long-term learning of medical students, as well as its impact on other forms of multimedia instructional programmes used in the education of medical students.
美国医学学院协会医学教育研究所的报告题为“有效利用教育技术”，呼吁研究人员研究多媒体设计原则的有效性。这些原则在实验室研究中对大学生的学习效果进行了实证研究，但尚未对本科医学专业的学生进行研究。
采用预测试/后测试对照组设计，其中传统学习组使用传统设计的幻灯片进行关于休克的讲座，而改良设计组则使用符合 Mayer 多媒体设计原则修改后的幻灯片进行相同的讲座。参与者包括在一所私立中西部医学院攻读第三年的医学生，他们在 2009-2010 学年期间完成外科实习。医学院将学生分成四组，每组在学年的四个季度中参加外科实习。第二和第三季度的学生为改良设计组（n=91），第四季度的学生为传统设计组（n=39）。
两个学生群体的预讲座知识水平相似。两组在保留（p<0.0001）、转移（p<0.05）和总分（p<0.0001）方面的后测均显著提高。重复测量方差分析显示，使用多媒体设计原则进行教学的学生在保留（F=10.2，p=0.0016）和总分（F=7.13，p=0.0081）方面的提高更为显著，具有统计学意义。
多媒体设计原则易于实施，可提高医学生短期保留率，但仍需要进行实证研究，以确定这些原则如何影响学习的转移。需要进一步研究将多媒体设计原则应用于医学教育，以验证其对医学生长期学习的影响，以及对医学学生教育中使用的其他形式多媒体教学计划的影响。
