Effectiveness of multimedia instruction in health professions education compared to traditional instruction

It is the challenge of many health care educators to find epistemological means to create learning environments that promote critical thinking, decision making and transfer of knowledge from didactic to clinical settings in order to enhance the knowledge, skills and performance of health care students. In addition, due to a rapidly changing health care environment, health professions education has been plagued with increasing quantities of complex information with waning numbers of faculty members. Investigating pedagogical strategies that address these issues is essential. Implementing carefully designed multimedia instruction (MMI) may be part of the solution. This literature review will present research regarding the effectiveness of MMI in health care education compared to traditional pedagogies. Two specific domains emerged from the literature: types of learning with MMI and the instructional design of multimedia learning environments. Regardless of the outcomes of the study, each researcher favorably described the value of MMI in health care education, citing a need for further research before universal implementation of this technology is placed in the curriculum.