e-Learning

FOCUS AREAS

OVERVIEW

Access to effective, high-quality, online educational resources provides a critically important avenue improve equity, standardization, and scalability to our nation’s youth. iRT is at the forefront of developing multimedia-rich, accessible, interactive, web- and mobile-based eLearning programs.

A key strategy for overcoming inequities in educational quality as well as reducing health disparities across rural and urban communities is the use of engaging eLearning resources. The ubiquitous use of digital devices and a significant reduction in the digital divide across the world has made eLearning a viable and critical tool for use in frontline health and educational efforts to provide scalable, consistent, and high-quality training.

In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the need for eLearning educational solutions across age groups and occupations has grown. Engaging and retaining the learner, while allowing learners to demonstrate mastery of both knowledge and skills is a challenge for the best of educators. Given the many demands on the time of teachers today, teachers need access to asynchronous, proven interactive eLearning programs for their students.

OUR WORK

iRT has been on the vanguard of innovations in eLearning course development and research.

We engage in an intensive and iterative course development process including comprehensive literature reviews; interviews and/or focus groups with key stakeholders to inform both content development and pedagogical approaches; consultation with instructional design researchers and practitioners, subject matter experts, and end users; and usability studies. Most importantly, our eLearning process culminates in conducting a randomized controlled trial to rigorously evaluate both the effectiveness and consumer satisfaction with our finished eLearning programs on key learning, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes.

Consistent with iRT’s mission to improve the health and well-being of youth, families, schools, organizations, and communities, we have developed, evaluated, and published empirical papers on our eLearning programs. Target audiences have included groups such as elementary, middle, and high school students, parents, and teachers; community college students; substance misuse prevention professionals and community antidrug coalitions members; mentors, mentees, parents or guardians of mentees, and mentoring program staff members; and positive youth development workers. iRT has developed eLearning courses in fields of mentoring, media literacy education for substance misuse prevention and comprehensive sexual education, mindfulness education, safe and drugged driving, community strategies for substance misuse prevention, and teaching children and teens about participation in clinical trials.

In addition to iRT’s work in development of eLearning programs, our innovative IT department created a robust learning management system (LMS) for conducting research on eLearning as well as to support use of iRT’s eLearning programs by customers and organizations. The LMS is a part of iRT’s larger research resources software platform, eTrove. The eTrove LMS includes many sophisticated administrative features needed by organizations and research teams including the ability to create complex, multi-layered organizational structures; allow for multiple views of the platform; management of administrators and their roles; and automated deployment of questionnaires for use in program evaluation and research (e.g., pre, post) of eLearning courses.

TEAM

Dr. Janis Kupersmidt conducts eLearning research and product development on the topics of media literacy education for substance misuse prevention and comprehensive sexual education, mindfulness education, mentoring, and safe and drugged driving.

Dr. Rebecca Stelter conducts eLearning research and product development on the topics of mentoring, community strategies for substance misuse prevention, and safe and drugged driving.

Dr. Alison Parker conducts eLearning research and product development on the topics of mindfulness education, and teaching children and teens about participation in clinical trials.

Dr. Tracy Scull conducts eLearning research and product development on the topics of media literacy education for substance misuse prevention and comprehensive sexual education, training parents about communicating with their teens about sex and relationships, and teaching children and teens about participation in clinical trials.

Dr. Christina Dodson conducts eLearning research and product development on the topics of media literacy education for comprehensive sexual education and training parents about communicating with their teens about sex and relationships.

Dr. Allison Schmidt conducts eLearning research and product development on the topics of media literacy education and safe driving.