Review of Effective Internet Interventions for Health Education

We know that internet-based education can be effective for health education, a recent review of internet-based health care instruction (2010, Academic Medicine 85:909-922), suggests which kinds of materials may be the most effective. 

The authors searched several databases for papers looking at the effect of internet-based learning for a number of different audiences including students and professional doctors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, and others.  They classified the different approaches to get an idea of what kinds of different designs lead to the most effective learning outcomes.

They found that the methods that lead to better learning outcomes include interactivity, practice exercises, repetition, and feedback.  Interactivity included activities such as self-assessment questions, interactive models, or thought-stimulating activities.  Repetitive designs used repeated exposures to materials, for instance, emails with multiple repetitions of the same material. 

This paper is freely available and is a very good read for people interested in a survey of the different online methods used for health education, and for a review of the methods that have proven the most effective.