Running head:

Health and Nutrition Lesson Project Report: Proposed Prototype Development and Recommendations for Future Level 2 and 3 Evaluation Artifact #2 for 3b James Becker Purdue University Practicum 573

2 Health and Nutrition Lesson Project: Proposed Development and Recommendations for Future Evaluation

This is not a final report, but development of some important pieces that will go into the projects final report for the Practicum, which will be shared with the project supervisor, Dr. Ferolli. In light of piloting the projects prototype lessons, it is useful to consider what changes will be made to the prototype and what the organization should consider for developing a evaluations of the impact of the lessons. Review of Project Goals One of the top priorities of this project was to reach Hispanic/Latino people, especially men who seldom participated in health education. The reasons for this are many and varied, but in the piloting of the prototype we were able to engage 3 women and 2 men to help us test the prototype and spoke to a third man who was a pastor showing interest in working with the organization to bring such lessons to his congregation. The first goal in the project proposal referred to this issue above and appears to have great potential based on our experience in the pilot of the prototype at a local Mexican carniceria/restaurant in Indianapolis. SME Patty Sanders works primarily with women, but the use of the prototype may give her an important tool for reaching men and other women who dont have time for more formal lessons and cooking demonstrations. The goals as originally stated in the proposal include the following:
Reach clientele for whom time is an issue and cant make it to regular class settings. o Men are seldom able to participate due to timing and cultural issues. Online access to the lesson would make this easier to work around. Create lessons that are easier to use in a home environment, take less time for the client. Reach more people with risk for high cholesterol, hypertension, and diabetes.

3
The goal of creating lessons that are easier to use in a home environment refers to moving from a curriculum used by the organization that is primarily designed for a classroom setting and not really convenient for use in a less formal setting. The final goal refers to diet risks that come from food preferences of some Hispanic/Latino cultures. Hispanic/Latino men are particularly at risk for diabetes and high cholesterol and hypertension.

Pilot and Level 1 Analysis The pilot for this project was conducted at a local restaurant/carniceria/grocery where SME Patty Sanders knows the manager. We were able to utilize a table and two laptops for the process on the afternoon of February 13th. The prototype contained two complete lessons with 4 videos. The videos cover Whole Grain and Vegetable nutrition, as well as cooking demonstrations for the whole grain food Pupusas and a Curtido salad. The videos are embedded with the lessons in a Captivate program. The lesson pieces themselves reinforce what is stated in the videos about whole grain foods and vegetables. The lessons show images and text and have one matching game for identifying different colored vegetables. The videos address the main learning objectives for each topic, while the lesson activities help reach some of the subobjective goals for these topics. Patty Sanders was able to recruit store patrons at the Carniceria who had some extra time and were willing to try out the lessons. There were 3 women and 2 men over the course of about 2 hours. Some of the time was also just spent talking with the volunteers after they had completed our paper level 1 survey, which was also helpful. There were eight questions asking the following in Spanish (see translations next to them):
1 Le ha gustado la experiencia? (un ciruculo) Si No 2. Fueron las lecciones fciles de entender? Si No Did you enjoy the lessons? Were these lessons easy to understand?

4
3. Haba demasiada informacion? Si No 4. Qu parte era dificil de entender? Si No a. Granos Enteros b. Nutricion del Vegetales 5. Le pareciobien de los videos era bueno? Si No 6. Te gustaronn los videos? Si No 7. Qu es lo que mas disfrato de las clases? lessons? 8. Qu es lo que menos le gusta de las clases? Was there too much reading? Was there a part not easy to understand?

Was the length of the videos good? Did you like the videos? What did you like the most about the

What did you like least about the lessons?

Results:

Yes 1. Did you enjoy the lessons?

2. Were these lessons easy to understand? 3. Was there too much reading? 4. Was there a part not easy to understand? (Whole Grain or Vegetables) 5. Was the length of the videos good? 6. Did you like the videos?

No 0 0 4 4 0 0

5 5 1 1 -Vegetables 5 5

Open ended
7. What did you like the most about the lessons?

Comments Recipes -2 Information about vegetables and the vitamins in vegetables. 2 Nutrient information Importance of vegetables Everything - 2 Too slow (in the lesson portion of the whole grain) Dots (meaning the 3-D ball buttons) Nothing

8. What did you like least about the lessons?

5
Other comments:

Latinos dont have enough educational knowledge. Get nutrition information to them.

The responses to these questions are helpful, because in combination with the comments appreciating the information, they appeared to be quite sincere. The feedback about some of the digital buttons was welcome and probably somewhat anticipated, though not everyone felt they were a problem. Still it is enough to warrant looking at different ways to accomplish things in that part of the lesson, primarily in whole grains.

ID Observations The 3 women had reasonable computer skills, but the buttons still caused some issues. The pointer has to remain on the button for the pop-out information to stay open One of the two men had no experience with a computer and the second preferred to have help. Videos maybe do not need visible player, may be better if they played automatically since the flash player can always be taken back to another slide. The whole grain slide broken into 4 quadrants has too much trying to go on and would be better being just 2 halves. The lessons seemed to be a reasonable length of time, nobody had to leave before finishing one and doing the level one survey. There are several locations that would benefit from voiceover audio instruction or information about the images. This would mitigate some of the experience problems with navigating this kind of lesson. It was not a question, but it did not appear more than 1 or 2 had much computer experience. One indirect benefit of this appears that it may be a great recruitment tool and new way for Patty Sanders to teach people without having to do full blown cooking demonstrations. When she and/or her clients are pressed for time the lesson an videos can save them probably 30 minute or more. It will make going to public places where cooking is not an option possible.

These observations were written down at the time of the pilot and fit in well with the next section considering development and next steps.

Proposed Development According to Horton (2012), development of e-learning never follows a straight path. It requires design, redesign, testing, then redesign again, multiple times is common. So this initial pilot is a dose of reality that helps with the development process and I am recommending additional pilots as we get revisions in place. Horton (2012) also writes about simplifying activities, which I think is very appropriate for this project. Case and point the slide I created with 4 quadrants. If you create 4 quadrants you must fill four quadrants and in an interactive program it is like juggling 4 balls. I tried to concentrate on only 2 quadrants at a time, but that doesnt stop the eyes of a learner from looking at them. I sensed this was a problem, but time constraints kept me on that path. Simplifying this slide and providing some audio cues and simpler buttons/text, will help to improve it. Some of the specific component for the next phase are: 1. Audio in Spanish to help with navigation, reading text information in pop-ups and instructions for activities. 2. Simplify buttons. Some the interactive buttons are probably okay, so long as they are not overused and their roll is not creating timing issues with other events in the Captivate timeline. 3. Structure text so it does not take as long to read. Some of the text information is lengthy, even though there were no specific complaints about it. 4. Try to include some connect activities in each topic area, including whole grains. The slide with the nutrition labels could be re-worked to include something like this. Other topic yet to be developed, Fruit, Proteins and Fats could also have some similar activities. 5. The matching game in vegetables which is a connect activity is going to be reworked to add a couple more categories for more variety of vegetables, but fewer vegetables overall. 6. If the lessons are to be utilized on-line or on a small storage device, they will probably need to become individual lessons rather than being part of one file. It is still possible to use a main menu concept, but size and speed need to be considered for managing the files.

7 Level 2 and Level 3 Evaluation Potential Presently the prototype lessons have some questions at the end of the Captivate, which come from the organizations older health and nutrition program. They are not designed to measure knowledge gained, or to test knowledge, but more like asking the learners likelihood to behave differently. How accurate or useful the information collected from these questions can be to the future of such a program is probably questionable. My recommendation would be to do more a traditional quiz model to pre-test knowledge, for example about dark green vegetables and then follow it up with a post-test that asks them to demonstrate their new knowledge about dark green vegetables. Developing a set of pre and post questions for a level two analysis would help the project establish a clearer picture of knowledge gained by the learners. Many of the learning objectives for the different lessons involve behavioral change. If you recognize that dark vegetables have better nutrition, more fiber, etc. Does the learner go out and buy dark vegetables? How can we know or even begin to know? One way might be to add an element of having the learner create a plan. The lessons all include recipes, though a written form has not yet been provided in the prototype a button exists on the main menu. Since the recipes all include ingredients that support the lessons, then developing a shopping list and planning to create that food for ones family would demonstrate a step forward from: A. Understanding the information they have learned B. Taking the information and moving forward to apply it. The learners could be asked to take photos if they have a camera phone and upload them or tweet them to the SME Patty Sanders or project Director Dr. Ferroli. Of course this then begs the question, is it just a one-time thing. Ways that the learners could self-report are important since time is an issue, due to the small amount of staffing and resources. Using Blackboard as we

8 originally planned is one idea and/or creating Facebook group where learners could upload folders and comments about their activities, might be another way to do this.

9 References Horton, W. (2012). E-Learning by Design (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. Kirkpatrick, D. L., & Kirkpatrick, J. D. (2006). Evaluating Training Programs (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.