Multimedia instruction as a tool for teaching ergonomic analysis skills

An interactive, multimedia instructional system prototype, called ErgoTrainer, has been proposed, built, and evaluated. ErgoTrainer is based on the constructivist perspective of instruction. It aids students in gaining ergonomic knowledge and learning the skill of ergonomic job analysis while performing a simulated job analysis on a real industry job. Through the use of case-studies and hands-on experience, a learning environment is constructed which promotes both exploratory constructivist based learning as well as guided exploration. The use of multimedia promotes authenticity and hopefully leads to transfer of the learned knowledge to the workplace. The results of initial evaluation of the prototype are positive.