Could you please offer insights or guiding resources for how to cite references in a professional course for international audiences? What is the gold standard "style" --both for a reference list, and for on-screen? The course is for nurses but is not clinical material. References will likely be scholarly articles. Subject matter experts are from different regions of the world.
Normally I attach an APA-style reference list to the storyline player for learners to download, but do not necessarily cite references on-screen. One of the authors of a course I'm designing is not familiar with APA-style.
Hi Anastasia. The good news is you have a lot of options for including citations in an e-learning course. The bad news is ALSO that you have a lot of options for citations. That makes deciding what approach to use harder than if there's a gold standard everyone likes best. But on the plus side, there's a lot of flexibility for choosing an approach that fits the content, audience, and even slide design.
Here are some of the approaches I've seen used effectively in the past:
Include a reference or resource list as a new item on the player menu
Add a downloadable PDF of references to a resource section in the course.
Add a slide of references as the final screen in the course
Use a lightbox to show the course references without navigating away from the current slide
Add links directly in the course copy any time external sources are referenced
Add citations as footnotes on each slide
One way to decide is to consider how your average learner will want to use this information. Is it something most learners will only want to access rarely, if at all? Then tucking it away in the player menu, on the final screen, or in a lightbox is likely a good solution. But if they'll want to constantly access the references as they go, in-copy links or on-slide footnotes may be more convenient. Personally, I think a menu item or lightbox combines the best of both experiences: it's hidden when learners don't need that information but easy to access when they do.
Of course, once you've picked a way to display your references, then there's a matter of how you want to format them. There's also not a single reference formatting style in e-learning, so you'll want to think about what's going to be the most convenient and easy-to-understand option for your audience. Given the audience is nurses and the material you'll be referencing will be mostly scholarly articles, maybe using the formatting approach of a major medical journal would work? Chances are that format would at least be familiar to an international audience (even if it may not be the format most commonly used in every region).
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Hi Anastasia. The good news is you have a lot of options for including citations in an e-learning course. The bad news is ALSO that you have a lot of options for citations. That makes deciding what approach to use harder than if there's a gold standard everyone likes best. But on the plus side, there's a lot of flexibility for choosing an approach that fits the content, audience, and even slide design.
Here are some of the approaches I've seen used effectively in the past:
One way to decide is to consider how your average learner will want to use this information. Is it something most learners will only want to access rarely, if at all? Then tucking it away in the player menu, on the final screen, or in a lightbox is likely a good solution. But if they'll want to constantly access the references as they go, in-copy links or on-slide footnotes may be more convenient. Personally, I think a menu item or lightbox combines the best of both experiences: it's hidden when learners don't need that information but easy to access when they do.
Of course, once you've picked a way to display your references, then there's a matter of how you want to format them. There's also not a single reference formatting style in e-learning, so you'll want to think about what's going to be the most convenient and easy-to-understand option for your audience. Given the audience is nurses and the material you'll be referencing will be mostly scholarly articles, maybe using the formatting approach of a major medical journal would work? Chances are that format would at least be familiar to an international audience (even if it may not be the format most commonly used in every region).
Bianca, this was super helpful, thank you!