Although pedestrian injuries are one of the leading killers of young children, our review shows that there are currently no empirically-based, early implemented prevention program targeting pedestrian safety skills for young children. This project will develop an interactive multimedia program to teach pedestrian safety skills to children in grade K-3. The program will be designed for use in school and home settings and will be available in both CD-ROM and Internet formats. The program will present both abstracted (i.e., animated) and detailed actual (i.e., video) situations to teach children a comprehensive set of pedestrian safety skills (e.g., crossing streets, playing safely near streets, walking in neighborhood, crossing parking lots). Program effectiveness will be optimized by tailoring the presentation to the student-user based on community context (i.e., urban/suburban or rural) and grade (K-3). The critical features of this project are: the utilization of interactive media for the instructional presentation to the individual user; the incorporation of instructional design features that have been shown to achieve maximum learning: and the application of safety skills in video-based examples of real life traffic situations. The program will incorporate computer-based assessment with remediation to ensure content mastery. A randomized clinical trial will evaluate program efficacy.
Multimedia educational software is a growing field, with both schools and home users comprising a large customer base. The individualization afforded by multimedia, combined with superior instructional design and remediation as needed, make this CD-ROM and internet product a simple cost-effective way for schools to teach pedestrian safety. This product will be attractive to parents seeking new ways to teach children safety skills.
