D.G Jameson

Broadband telemedicine: teaching on the information superhighway.

The INSURRECT project uses the SuperJANET network to link six sites in the UK for interactive teaching and learning in surgery, an area of higher education where visual information is critical to the learning process. Collaboration between the six universities allows students access to a larger pool of surgical expertise and case studies than any single institution could provide. The project expects to improve the time that medical students can devote to surgery by up to 50%, by providing both supervised and unsupervised access to important visual information and case studies. Finally, the reduction in student numbers in operating theatres should reduce the infection risk to patients. A key component of the project is the central image resource, located in London, but allowing students and surgeons access from anywhere on the network. This paper describes the development of the interactive surgical teaching system and our experience with it during the first 18 months. One subjective observation, noticed after just one terms teaching, was the improved quality of the teaching.

Lessons learned during the INSURRECT project (INteractive SURgical Teaching at REmote CeNtres)

The INSURRECT project began in 1993 as a collaboration between six UK universities in distance teaching of undergraduate surgery. The first year was spent in testing the network and preparing the course material. This was followed by a two-year pilot teaching course. During this phase, 108 teaching sessions were conducted, involving more than 1300 students in all. It was found that successful teaching depended on increasing the amount of audience interaction as much as possible and transmitting high-quality video pictures. Although the time taken to deliver material by interactive video was greater than for convention al lectures, both students and teachers responded favourably to the project.

Real-time interactivity on the SuperJANET network

The experience of using the SuperJANET (ATM) asynchronous transfer mode video network for teaching surgery to undergraduates is reported, and the requirements for teaching and conferencing are contrasted. The network is used to Link six UK University Medical Schools to deliver an 18-session course three times per year. Each session is designed to be a multimedia presentation encouraging students to interact with each other and with the lecturer.The paper is divided into three sections; the first describing the nature of the network, the second the discussing technical and pedagogical matters concerning interaction on the network, and the third drawing attention to the need to give special attention to audiovisual matters if the best quality of video and audio is to be achieved on the network. The signals originate in the teaching space in analogue format and on reaching the CODEC are digitised and passed over the distance network using ATM technology. This requires the collaboration of both the AV personnel with their expertise in analogue video, and the network support personnel to handle the digital signal transmission.The problems discussed include the handling of echo, which is induced as a result of the compression and decompression of the video signal, and the control of network switching of incoming video signals in the interaction between students and lecturers. Attention is also drawn to the differences between videoconferencing and video teaching. An example is described of how a site which is not part of the SuperJANET ATM video network is included in the collaborative teaching using a different technology. Finally there is a need to integrate the real-time teaching with self-learning, so network resources have been implemented to support both Live teaching and CAL (computer aided learning).Changes have been made in the way teaching is carried out as a result of the feedback from both students and teachers. The solutions and changes are usually the results of compromise between what the teachers would prefer and the functionality of the network. The experience of television production has had a major impact on the way interactivity has been established in the network teaching environment.