Module Content Development

In the creation of educational content, your main focus should be to create high-quality materials that effectively deliver the information to the learner. This involves considering both the type of content and how it's presented to enhance learning and comprehension. Here's how to go about it:

1. Identify Content Types: Your first task is to understand the kind of materials you need to create to meet your learning objectives. This could range from text documents, infographics, videos, quizzes, or animations.
2. Scripting & Storyboarding: If your content includes videos or animations, start with scripting what you'll say or illustrating a storyboard for what you'll show. This outline will guide the production process and ensure you cover all the necessary points.
3. Create the Content: With your content outline in place, begin creating. If you're writing, make sure your language is clear, concise, and engaging. For videos, record your footage ensuring good quality both in visuals and audio. For images and infographics, use graphic design tools to create clear and appealing visuals.
4. Interactive Elements: If you're creating quizzes or other interactive elements, ensure they align with the learning objectives and are designed to reinforce the course material.

Additional Resource: Audiovisual Guidance and Open-Licensed Content

Creating a simulator provides learners with a practical, safe, and effective method to apply surgical skills. As you design your simulation, it's crucial to consider the following steps:

1. Understanding the Concept of Simulation: A simulation is an imitation of a real-world process or system over time. In surgical training, simulations create models of human body systems, allowing learners to practice skills in a controlled and risk-free environment.
2. Determining the Type of Simulation: Decide whether a hardware-based or a software-based simulation is more suitable for your course. This decision will depend on the surgical skill being taught and the resources available to your learners.
3. Defining Learning Objectives: What are the intended learning outcomes from the simulation? The learning objectives should guide the development of your simulation, ensuring it aligns with the skills to be acquired.
4. Conceptualizing the Simulation: Brainstorm and outline the operation of the simulation. How complex should it be? What scenarios should it include? How will learners interact with it?
5. Detailing the Simulation: Sketch or write down detailed descriptions of each element of the simulation. This includes the steps learners will take, decisions they need to make, tools they will use, and feedback they will receive.
6. Designing the User Interface: For software simulations, consider how learners will interact with the program. The interface should be intuitive and user-friendly, providing clear instructions and feedback.
7. Ensuring Accessibility: If your simulation is software-based, ensure it is accessible online. For Google Play Store, follow these steps. For App Store, follow these steps. If you encounter difficulties with the App Store, refer to these steps for uploading the app on a web-based Android emulator.
8. Certification: To enhance the credibility of your open-source content, consider getting it certified. The OSHWA provides a platform for this.

Additional Resource: Digital and Physical Design

Self-assessment plays a unique and critical role in the learning process, particularly in self-guided learning modules. Unlike regular assessments, self-assessments are not about passing or failing, but about fostering introspection, self-awareness, and personal development. As such, when designing a self-assessment, the focus should be on fostering learners' abilities to judge their own performance and identify areas for growth.

Here are some key considerations when designing self-assessments:

• Learner Focus: Self-assessments are learner-centric. They are designed to encourage learners to reflect on their understanding and performance, and are less about providing an objective measure of learning for the teacher or course provider.
• Formative Purpose: Self-assessments typically have a formative purpose. This means they are intended to help learners identify areas where they need to focus or improve, rather than just providing a score or grade.
• Feedback: Self-assessments should be designed to provide immediate feedback. This enables learners to immediately see where they need to focus their learning efforts.

Given our course structure, it's advisable to have a pre-learning clinical confidence assessment, a main self-assessment incorporating all the learnings, and a final post-learning confidence assessment. Here are the steps to structure these assessments:

1. Pre-Learning Clinical Confidence Assessment: This initial assessment will help learners understand their current level of confidence in the subject area before they begin the course.

• Define the areas of knowledge and skills that will be covered in your course.
• Create a series of questions or statements related to these areas.
• Ask learners to rate their level of confidence for each one on a scale (e.g., 1-5 or 1-10, with 1 being not confident at all and 10 being extremely confident).

2. Main Self-Assessment: This is the assessment of all the learning objectives in your module. Here are the steps to structure this assessment:

• Identify key learning points: Create a list of key learning points for each section of your course. These will form the basis for your assessment questions.
• Write clear and specific questions: Each question should align with a learning point and effectively measure the learner's understanding of that point.
• Decide on question format: Depending on the nature of your course, you might choose a series of multiple-choice questions or a case-based assessment that gives them multiple scenarios to practice these skills.
• Include answer explanations: Where possible, include explanations for correct answers to help reinforce learning.

3. Post-Learning Clinical Confidence Assessment: This final assessment is to understand how the learner's confidence has evolved throughout the course.

• Reuse the pre-learning confidence assessment questionnaire.
• Compare pre- and post-learning responses to determine areas of improvement and areas needing more focus.

Some examples of self assessment learning modules are as follows:

Tibial Fracture Fixation

Crash Savers