Instructional design, delivery and evaluation of interactive case based e-CME contents

Background and purpose: Studies have shown the advantages of e-CME programs. Developing Case-based e-CME activities, one of the popular formats of e-CME programs, is difficult and time consuming. In this article we describe our experience of performing instructional system design for creating case-based e-CME contents. Methods: We performed a five-step instructional system design (i.e. system analysis, design, development, delivery and evaluation) to create e-contents. We held several sessions with experts of the field to perform system analysis. Then we determined contents’ framework and a plan for faculty members’ development and incentives. In the development phase, we held workshops for faculty members and trained e-learning advisors who would help faculties to create contents. Incentives were legitimized. Then we delivered programs to the learners who would fill a program evaluation questionnaire after completing the study of each program.   Results: 20 e-CME programs were developed and delivered to the learners. Totally 3644 learner-programs were studied. Cases rated the programs as 4.56 (SD= 0.65) on the 1–5 Likert-type scale.Conclusion: Results showed that the learners rated this kind of learning activity very high. On the other hand we had some challenges for developing the contents. Performing a comprehensive instructional system design would help to overcome the barriers.