Investigation of e-Learning content instructional design principles in the affective domain

Recently, the use of e-learning to deliver learning content has widely accepted by the corporate training as well as the universities courseware in Taiwan. However, the content of those e-courses are most focused on the cognitive objectives, such as teaching facts and concepts. There are seldom designed in the motor skill domain, which is teaching technical skills and operational procedures. Neither less to say, there were relatively neglected for the affective domain, such as attitude teaching, value building, character cultivating. Martin and Briggs [1] mentioned that most course designs were laid heavily on developing the objectives of cognitive skills, cognitive strategies as well as knowledge, seldom on affective learning. Even there were more or less the affective components included in some courses, but they were not obviously shown and most of them were lack of appropriate strategies in designing the affective content. These phenomenon may be explained that file affective contents are difficult to conceptualize and to be measured; therefore most people devote time in designing the content in the cognitive domain rather than in the affective one. Smith and Regan [2] pointed out that the traditional separation of "cognitive, affective or ''psychomotor domains" is much under question. In fact, any cognitive or psychomotor" objective has sonic affective component to it, like a willingness, motivation, attitude, or intention. Thus, rather than view them as completely separate, an competent instructional designer should strive to integrate them. The purposes of this study were to propose and examine instructional design principles of affective domain in e-learning instructional materials. This study first reviewed literature on the psychological factors, principles, cognitive processes, instructional strategies and organization strategies of instructional design in affective teaming domain. Based on the taxonomy of affective objectives by Krathwohl, Bloom, & Masia [3] and the in-depth interviewing with 11 experts in e-learning instructional design, the author proposed the 6-step PEARIE model composed of 18 internal and external factors of design principles. The 6-step model was material presentation (P), sensational experiencing (E), affective awareness (A), cognitive reflection (R), affective and cognitive integration (1), and value externalized (E). In order to examine the adequacy of those principles, the method of usability testing was adopted. Usability testing is a type of formative evaluation that consists of evaluating the product of principles by observing it in action with potential end users. Three end users were observed while interaction with the e-learning content designed from those principles. Observations of the three end users in action suggested ways to effectively eliminate the problems and then the principles were revised. Finally, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of those design principles. 60 students were selected and randomly divided into 2 groups. Students in the control group learned the pre-existed courseware that was developed by other instructional designer without coached by those design principles. Students in the experimental group learned file courseware that was re-designed with integration of those design principles. The task was the attitude change in studying behaviors. The result from a t-test indicated that students participated in the experiment group significantly outperformed that those in the control group in learning the content with the affective objectives. This research provides evidence to suggest this 6-step model of design principles was useful and effective in designing e-learning instructional content in affective domain.