Gérard Soula

Experimenting with new paradigms for medical education and the emergence of a distance learning degree using the internet: teaching evidence-based medicine

This paper is focused on designing and developing a teaching environment associated with an introductory course in evidence-based medicine designed for undergraduates. Attempting to break away from the traditional educational model based on acquisition of factual knowledge, we developed a software tool centred on content management, student assessment and feedback. We ran this course on an educational website, using chat rooms and electronic mail for trainer-trainee communication over one academic year. The website served as a repository for knowledge and information and presented freestanding web-based interactive study modules and a non-interactive degree course. Trainers and trainees responded favourably to the computer applications and the Internet. This project demonstrated the feasibility of computer-aided learning and the advantages of distance teaching over the Internet.

An integrated approach to distance learning with digital video in the French-speaking Virtual Medical University

The aim of the French-speaking Virtual Medical University project (UMVF) is to share common resources and specific tools in order to improve medical training. Digital video on IP is an attractive tool for higher education but there are a number of obstacles to widespread implementation. This paper describes the UMVF approach to integrating digital video technologies and services in educational projects.

An open repositories network development for medical teaching resources

The lack of interoperability between repositories of heterogeneous and geographically widespread data is an obstacle to the diffusion, sharing and reutilization of those data. We present the development of an open repositories network taking into account both the syntactic and semantic interoperability of the different repositories and based on international standards in this field. The network is used by the medical community in France for the diffusion and sharing of digital teaching resources. The syntactic interoperability of the repositories is managed using the OAI-PMH protocol for the exchange of metadata describing the resources. Semantic interoperability is based, on one hand, on the LOM standard for the description of resources and on MESH for the indexing of the latter and, on the other hand, on semantic interoperability management designed to optimize compliance with standards and the quality of the metadata.

Les nouvelles technologies de l’information au service de l’enseignement des soins continus intégrés : une expérience marseillaise

Resume Nous presentons ici la methodologie, la description et l’evaluation d’un site Internet a vocation pedagogique developpe pour les etudiants du Diplome d’Universite « Accompagnement et soins palliatifs approche multidisciplinaire de la fin de vie » de la Faculte de Medecine de Marseille.