Zeitschrift für Hochschuldidaktik Nr. 2000/1
Medicine Study 2000
Alternatives for Learning and Assessment, Teaching and Evaluation
Christof DAETWYLER (Bern, Switzerland)
Editor's Preface
Dear reader,
Because there were more excellent articles than there is place for in one volume, they have been divided into two sections - this is the second one. Both sections build one volume, so most of the preface is the same for both sections. If you know already the first section, you will recognize the first part of the preface. Of course the introduction to the authors is specific to this section.
When I was asked if I would be prepared to put together an issue of the „Zeitschrift für Hochschuldidaktik“, I felt it to be a great honor. I then looked upon it as an obligation, and finally I really came to enjoy it. It took more than a year from when I first started to contact writers until the magazine's publication. A year full of intense contact with pioneers - people who became masters through their own hard work and who are possessed by a passion to go fearlessly into uncharted waters. Even though medical research has a totally different status to introducing learning and teaching through the use of new media, these people are all researchers in their own right. The people, who are active in this area, and with whom I had the luck to come into contact with, are people working very much at the cutting edge of their discipline. I am proud and happy that I was able to include in this publication the work of people who have supported me in my endeavor, and therefore take the opportunity to spread their thinking. Without their thoughts as my constant companions, this publication could never have taken place.
The goal of this publication is not to find some sort of consensus, which is against the pioneering spirit anyway, but to show the wide range of experience in the many facets of our specialty. The reader is thus given the opportunity to form his own opinions. Because there were more excellent articles than there is place for in one volume, they have been divided into two sections. The first volume covers more theoretical themes and the second focuses on the more practical aspects.
What follows is an introduction to the authors. This is important for me because I know nearly all of them personally and hold them in great esteem. I have chosen to introduce the authors in the order in which their articles appear in the magazine.
First, seven authors write about their ideas how IT could/should be used for education purposes. All of them did already realize educational software - so they did already experience how hard the landing is from the high fantasies down to the hard floor of "what can be done".
- Christof DAETWYLER, the editor of this publication, wrote an article about
"How Can Computers Assist Students Learning Clinical Medicine?". He is
medical doctor but works since more than seven years exclusively in the
field of computer aided medical education at the Division for Instructional
Media AUM of the Medical Faculty of the University of Bern, Switzerland.
Specially the two main projects he did together with Marco MUMENTHALER
are quite well known: Both, "Neurology interactive" and "Headache
interactive" were awarded with the EASA (European Academic Software
Award 1998 and 2000). Since October 2000, Christof Daetwyler moderates
a two day "Didactica" workshop at the Swiss Federal University ETH and
University of Zurich about how to create educational CD-ROMs. From
September 2001 on, Christof Daetwyler will join the Group of Joe
Henderson at the IML (Interactive Media Lab) of the Dartmouth-College
in New Hampshire, USA.
- Gernoth GRUNST wrote the second article about "Enabling Systems in
Medical Education". He develops multimedia-aided medical education
tools at the GMD-FIT (German Research Center for Information Technologies).
He's one of the founders of EnTec, a firm that specialize on the
creation and marketing of tools of this kind. A good example is the "Echo-Explorer",
a computer-aided multimedia tool that intend to enable the student
to perform an ECG on real patient after having trained it with this
tool.
- Alexander REPENNING and Andri IOANNIDOU are the authors of the
third article "Engaging Learners through Simulation-Based Design". Alex
REPENNING is the CEO and director of AgentSheets Inc. in Boulder,
Colorado (USA). He created "AgentSheets", a very sophisticated and
easy-to-use authoring tool that allows the creation of interactive simulations.
"AgentSheets" won several awards including the 1996 Gold Medal for
the Most Creative Educational Application of the WorldWideWeb. Agent-Sheets
Inc. is an organization supported by the National Science Foundation
and collaborating with the Center of LifeLong Learning & Design at
the University of Colorado.
Andri IOANNIDOU is the Senior Project Manager for AgentSheets Inc. in
Boulder, Colorado (USA) and a doctoral student at the University of
Colorado, Boulder. Her research interests include educational uses of
(simulation) technology, end-user programming, and reusable simulation
components.
- Reinhard FRIEDL is the main-author of the fourth article "Individualized
Learning and Teaching in Heart Surgery: The Cardio-OP Project". He is
Surgeon and Co-Developer of the "Galerie Herzchirurgie", a network-capable,
database-based and multimedia information system with educa-tional
and consulting components in the field of the surgery of the heart.
The same multimedia data are used but presented in a different manner for
the target groups (patients, teachers, students and others).
- Jens DØRUP, the author of the fifth article "Histology Explorer: User
Centered Design of Medical Learning Software" was Professor for Anatomy
and taught Histology for years. For his teaching-purposes - and the
student's learning-purposes - he created the "Histology-Explorer", a tutored
"virtual microscope" with an excellent quiz-section (students wants to
be quizzed). The histology explorer is available in English, Danish, Spain
and German language. Jens DØRUP felt really in love with new technolo-gies
for teaching and learning - so he left Anatomy and changed to the
Section for Health Informatics to make his "hobby" become his official
main occupation.
- Dino Carl NOVAK, author of the sixth article "InterSim: A self-determined
learning system with interactive guidance and authoring components",
was member of the "VoxelMan" - group and is today member of a group
at the GMD-FIT (German Research Center for Information Technologies)
where they try to implement an intelligent guidance for a learning system
called "InterSIM". "InterSim" is intended to be also an easy to use authoring
shell. Actually, the group is implementing "The Ear" - a prototype to
show the abilities of the system for authors and students.
- Martin FISCHER describes in the seventh article "CASUS: An Authoring
and Learning Tool Supporting Diagnostic Reasoning". He is one of the
initiators of the "CASUS" authoring and learning system. The aim of
"CASUS" is to easily implement case-based education for clinical medicine.
This is done by a very sophisticated authoring-system, which allows
even an inexperienced user to put texts and multimedia data in a structured
way together to a learning program. The system enables the author to
illustrate his diagnostic reasoning strategy in a sophisticated way - and
make it available to the student as a reference.
In the second section of this volume we will confront ourselves with the reality
how the new media are used in medical education. It will become very
clear that these media are used only if they are a valuable preparation for the
exams and if those who are responsible for the curriculum propose them to
the students.
- Peter FREY writes the first article of this section about "Paper or PC?
Computer Aided Learning under Evaluation". Peter FREY runs the Division forInstructional Media of the Institute for Medical Education in Bern.
He evaluated the use of CBT at the medical faculty of Bern. He writes
about how the evaluation was done, about the results - and about the consequences.
- Florian EITEL describes in the second article "Why We Had to Get Rid of
Computer-based Tutorials as Part of the Syllabus in Our Learning
Center". Florian Eitel is a pioneer in computer assisted medical education.
He is Chairman in the German and the European Society for Medical
Education. He writes about why he took all the MultiMedia-Stuff out of
his learning center - and why the remaining part of computer-assisted learning
are some web-based material that are integrated into the curriculum.
- Richard MARZ describes together with his colleagues Karl KREMSER and
Paolo PETTA "A Web-based learning and Reviewing Tool for the Final
Exam in Medical Chemistry at the University of Vienna". Richard MARZ
is one of the responsible persons for the actual reformation of the medical
curriculum in Vienna. He uses himself since years computer-aided learning
and teaching tools. He used the "The cell" program to teach his biochemistry
courses.
I wish the reader an interesting and entertaining lecture.
Bern, 6th of Ap