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Multimedia Pretraining to Teach Complex Content in Occupational Therapy Education
1Melisa Kaye, EdD, OTR/L, is Assistant Professor, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA; melisa.kaye@sjsu.edu.
Summary
Static concept map pretraining effectively prepares occupational therapy students for complex health care content. Animated concept maps did not improve learning and are not recommended for educational technology use.
Area of Science:
- Educational Technology
- Health Professions Education
- Cognitive Science
Background:
- Occupational therapy educators face challenges teaching complex content.
- Educational technology offers potential solutions for enhancing instruction.
- The multimedia principle of pretraining suggests introducing key terms before detailed concepts.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the effectiveness of three pretraining methods for complex health care content.
- To evaluate traditional, static concept map, and animated concept map pretraining.
- To assess student mastery of sensory integration theory.
Main Methods:
- First-year occupational therapy students (N=145) participated.
- Three 12-minute video interventions were administered: traditional, static concept map, or animated concept map pretraining.
- A structured word association test measured schematic knowledge post-intervention and after a 2-week delay.
Main Results:
- All pretraining methods improved learning.
- Static concept map pretraining yielded the greatest gains in student mastery.
- Animated concept maps did not enhance pretraining effectiveness compared to static maps.
Conclusions:
- Static concept map pretraining is an effective strategy for preparing students for complex topics.
- This method particularly benefits learners with lower prior knowledge.
- Animated concept maps offer no additional advantage and are not recommended.