Navigating Through Multimedia Principles to Design Psychomotor Nursing Skill Demonstration Videos

Abstract

In health professions education, real-life demonstrations are a common method for teaching psychomotor skills on campus. However, they present challenges such as limited visibility and time constraints. For Generation Z students, who prefer visual learning environments, demonstration videos offer a promising alternative, benefiting from the ease of production, sharing, and access to video-based content. Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning provides a foundational framework for designing instructional videos, emphasizing multimedia principles to enhance learning. However, the concrete application of these principles to demonstration videos for psychomotor skills in health professions education remains underexplored. This design case details the design and production process of demonstration videos for novice nursing and midwifery students to learn new psychomotor nursing skills, such as venipuncture. We developed a series of videos that integrate multimedia principles to minimize cognitive overload, optimize essential processing, and support generative processing. The challenges encountered during this process are discussed, emphasizing the importance of collaboration with audiovisual experts for technical support and content experts for refining scriptwriting and recordings of the skill demonstrations. Through this design process, we gained insight into how multimedia principles were operationalized within the development of psychomotor skill demonstration videos. We developed a series of videos informed by multimedia principles to reduce cognitive overload and support meaningful processing. The resulting checklist continues to guide our ongoing video production and informs our internal evaluation of design decisions.