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Computer-based virtual learning environments (CBVLEs) are potentially useful teaching tools for training nursing students in professional duties such as the mathematical tasks associated with medication processes. In this study, a CBVLE was designed with well-structured instructional activities such as interleaved practice and feedback. Mathematical medication scenarios and basic arithmetic exercises were integrated into the CBVLE. Four training conditions were used in the CBVLE to facilitate extra support for mathematical medication learning: (1) learning without worked examples, (2) learning with worked examples involving domain-specific knowledge, (3) learning with worked examples involving regular thinking strategies, and (4) learning with combined worked examples. This study was conducted with 118 nursing students enrolled in post-secondary nursing education and Bachelor’s nursing programmes. Students were pre-tested and post-tested on their mathematical medication learning. Training in the CBVLE improved mathematical medication learning for all students from pre-test to the post-test stages, but no differences were found among the four different conditions. Nursing students’ prior knowledge, non-verbal intelligence, and number of correct tasks predicted mathematical medication learning outcomes. When controlling for non-verbal intelligence, students in the condition 1 benefited more than students in condition 3 in terms of their mathematical medication learning outcomes. The same accounted for the support of the low-achieving students in the CBVLE. The support conditions for the high-achieving group appeared to be unimportant for mathematical medication learning. It seems that technology is taken over some of the capacity of working memory, which accounts for the benefits to the low-achieving learners.

Computer-based virtual learning environments (CBVLEs) have attracted attention as a learning innovation that can foster students' self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Research on the instructional design regarding these aspects of learning in a virtual learning environment is rather piecemeal. This study investigates the instructional design of a CBVLE for mathematical medication learning by nursing students in vocational education. The instructional design was based on a task-centered approach, and students' future learning tasks formed the backbone. We examine the extent to which the CBVLE fostered the nursing students' mathematical learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation, and the ways in which the design components of the CBVLE met nursing students' satisfaction. In total, 118 nursing students were assigned to four groups, with or without extra support from worked examples, and were trained via the CBVLE on mathematical medication learning tasks over four consecutive weeks. Students were pre-and post-tested on their mathematical medication learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation. Students also rated their satisfaction with the instructional design. Our results showed that the CBVLE fostered nursing students' mathematical medication learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation, but no significant differences were found between the four conditions. Overall, student satisfaction was above average. The design components were able to predict nursing students' mathematical medication learning, self-efficacy, and intrinsic motivation.

When I started this dissertation, mathematics in vocational education was government policy: there was a great deal of money spent on implementing policies, but little attention paid to the goal of mathematics in vocational education. Visions from mathematics in primary education were used vocational education, and teachers were given training to become mathematics teachers. They practised hard with their students, but it was hard to find motivation for mathematics among the students, and it was a tough job to lift students to a standard level. Many students needed more time to reach this standard. However, the school system does not give them that time. I therefore started to design digital environments with instructional clips, and collaborated with ICT professionals in vocational education to implement these clips in school learning platforms. To me, technology was the solution for those students who needed more time to reach the standard required to succeed in vocational education. Technology enabled the students to follow mathematics lessons independently of time and place, so that they could upgrade their mathematics knowledge and skills. This entailed a great deal of work, but it felt like a democratic protest against the system: all students should have the opportunity to succeed. That is where this dissertation begins: its start is the further development of mathematics in vocational education using digital learning material, and its destination is training in the concept of mathematics for students' tasks in the future. A digital wire of digital learning materials (DLMs) with structured content, goals, assignments, procedural knowledge clips, instructional knowledge clips, and a discussion board, moves on to a computer-based virtual learning environment (CBVLE) with learning tasks and instructional activities that support information for cognitive schemas, information for procedures, transfer tasks for automation, and cognitive feedback such as reflection on learning.