A Model for Integrating Technology and Learning in Public Health Education

As computer interfaces emerge as an instructional medium, instructors transitioning from the classroom continue to bear the burden of designing effective instruction. The medium of the computer interface, and the kinds of learning and interactive possibilities it affords, presumably changes the delivery of learner-centered instruction. Strategically, teachers not only need instructional design ability, but they also need competence with humancomputer interaction design. In addition, instructors and instructional designers need to be able to bring these two domains together, if they are to create truly learner-centered instruction using new media. This article focuses on how a team comprising an instructor and multimedia instructional developers collaborated to create a distance learning environment for a graduate course in public health. The authors will describe the workflow that the team used, focusing specifically on the integration between instructional design and human-computer interaction design frameworks as well as how the team approached design issues by incorporating various HCI theories. The authors will also show what insights the team had after a year and some of the strategic changes it made in light of them for the next.