Bike Smart and Walk Smart

Instructional Design

The research and development team that created the Walk Smart and Bike Smart programs solicited a wide range of advice from committed parents and professionals. Meetings of a specially formed Safety Education Advisory Panel composed of parents, educators, and safety officials provided input on content and format throughout the development process. Interviews with traffic and safety officials as well as elementary curriculum coordinators, classroom teachers and parents were conducted to determine how to best design the programs for home and classroom use.

Once the instructional content was determined, the component skills within the more complex skills being taught were identified. In the context of safe bicycle behavior, for example, the component discriminations of judging traffic distance and taking into account traffic patterns at intersections are pre-skills that are taught outside the context of learning to cross the street. Once these pre-skills are mastered, a generic strategy (e.g., "Look both ways") is taught using a range of examples that sample the entire range of intersections. Both relevant and irrelevant stimuli were included in these examples.

A mastery learning approach that incorporates short (quick) vignettes with frequent acknowledgment of progress and sufficient practice and review is used in the Walk Smart and Bike Smart programs. This approach has the highest likelihood of leading to successful acquisition and retention of the skills being taught. Both programs implement this approach through the use of Interactive Multimedia.

Walk Smart and Bike Smart programs incorporate the use of several interactive tools. The use of animations to present traffic-related situations provides a means for removing irrelevant stimuli. The abstracted situations permit children to focus on critical details and respond to specific elements in the environment. By gradually replacing the animations with semi-abstracted examples (e.g., actual photographs of streets and intersections with animated cars, 3-D models with photographic backgrounds, etc.), generalizations from the abstracted scenes to the complex and dynamic situations are induced. Once the core rules have been firmly established, the next step is to present action video examples.

Video materials provide many educational advantages that can greatly reinforce classroom lectures and printed material. The video materials used in the programs enable the effective teaching of pedestrian and bicycle safety skills by presenting real-life examples of traffic related scenarios. Both the animations and the videos provide several advantages over more traditional child safety programs, including a more controlled presentation of the material and greater interest and attention from the child viewing the program.

Finally, a key advantage of the Interactive Multimedia format as an educational tool is the ability to engage the viewer actively. The interactivity requires the learner to pay careful attention and respond overtly and frequently. These are behaviors that are related to increased performance in academic settings. The branching capabilities of these interactive programs allow the instructional material to be tailored to user performance. Children using the programs get immediate corrective feedback as needed, thereby increasing the usefulness of the program. Importantly, the overall program can still appear "seamless," despite the presence of numerous alternative branches.