A Few Thoughts on An Online Module I Tried Out

In my ongoing efforts to examine a variety of online courses, I just completed an online module: the "Breastfeeding E-Learning Module." This module had a few components about it that I really liked:

• started with a short video to catch your attention
• short module (~45 mins to complete)
• point form notes, to the point
• interactive (used T/F quizzes throughout)
• immediate feedback (as soon as you clicked on your answer, you were told if you were correct, often with a few sentences, or even a video to explain why you were correct or incorrect)
• a quiz at the end where you had to score >85% to pass the module

The thing that I didn't like about the module, however, was that often the "yes, you are correct" or "no, you are incorrect" was just typed in plain text, followed by the same explanation either way. It seemed to me that it needed something with more visual impact (like a big "X" next to "incorrect" and a big checkmark next to "correct" - as it didn't have much of an impact on me whether I was right or wrong, so I'm not sure how much the information will stick with me).

The other problem, of course, is that T/F questions tend to focus on the lower levels of thinking (remembering, rather than applying, analysis and synthesizing information). I'm not sure how to get around this one in an online course where you want to give immediate feedback though. Perhaps it requires a combination of using T/F or multiple choice quizzes for immediate feedback with case studies/discussion questions to get to the higher order thinking skills.