Motivational design of an e-learning application for managers in healthcare

Managers in healthcare work in a daily field of tension characterized by the requirements of patients, their employees and other stakeholders. At the same time, they are permanently under great time pressure (Vincent-Höper et al., 2020). In addition, the fast pace of today’s world means that the required knowledge must be constantly revised or relearned, and they are repeatedly faced with new problems (Daniel &amp; Wolbrink, 2019). The use of e-learning applications instead of traditional continuing education is one way to overcome such barriers (Reeves et al., 2017). However, if time resources are very tight, the motivation to use e-learning opportunities remains rather low.The motivation and thus the personal attitude of the learner can be affected by didactical design aspects (Zander &amp; Heidig, 2019). Therefore, many contributions and models on motivational design and the design of virtual learning environments in the literature are available. One of these models is the ARCS model, which was first introduced by Keller in 1984. The model shows an instructional design for the four areas of human motivation to learn, namely Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction, and what specific measures can help to promote motivation within these areas (Keller, 2010). The ARCS model has already been empirically validated and further developed several times (e.g. Zander &amp; Heidig, 2019). This paper explores the application of the model in healthcare.Especially for the healthcare sector, e-learning applications are convenient due to their flexible usage possibilities. In context of the development of an e-learning application to guide healthcare managers to a situation-appropriate and reflective approach to decision-making processes, the following research question arises:Based on the ARCS model, what recommendations for designing a digital learning application can be made to increase the motivation of managers in healthcare for using it?Following the ARCS model, a checklist for the motivational design of the digital learning application was derived. Some of these design-related recommendations were tested in an online questionnaire to find out whether the proposed designs would motivate managers to use the learning application. The group of participants consisted of N=30 managers in healthcare from different fields. Thereby, the following measures were evaluated:•Attention:-The use of audiovisual effects-The evocation of learner responses•Relevance:-The use of a sympathetic character-The use of personalized language•Confidence:-The explanation of assessment criteria•Satisfaction:-The experience of success in the form of feedback-The use of transparent, understandable assessment measuresThis paper describes the results of the empirical survey within the healthcare sector. The results indicate that the recommendations based on the ARCS model are appealing, for example, in terms of evoking a learner response, personalized language or even the use of a transparent, understandable feedback system. Based on this, implications for the design of the e-learning application for managers in healthcare are determined. At the end, the relevance and limitations of the use of the ARCS model for e-learning applications in healthcare are discussed.