Presentation Title:

 

Didactical Elements in a Web-Based and Case-Oriented Training System in Medicine

 

Claudia Scheuerer, Jochen Bernauer, Torsten Illmann, Alke Martens, Alexander Seitz, Michael Weber

University of Ulm

 

Abstract:

Docs ‘n Drugs the virtual clinic is a web-based and case-oriented training system in medicine for medical students, medical doctors and students of related disciplines. It emphasizes on the didactical support for the decision making process of medical treatment. We are developing a learning tool implemented in Java and HTML. For the acquisition of medical contents we are cooperating with physicians, specialized in the fields of cardiology, gynecology, infectious diseases and nephrology. These specialists work as authors for medical cases. For each medical case the author designs a navigation path that describes the possible successions of case elements for the learning tool. There will be sequences of case elements in which one element follows directly to another, the so-called ‘guided navigation’. In contrast to this guided navigation the so-called ‘free navigation’ allows the user to decide which sequence of steps he takes within a case. In the latter form of navigation the user is almost unlimited in his or her way through the case. Our tool allows the author to define the amount of influence he or she wants to take on the users actions.

Questions are integrated to consolidate the subject matter and to get the user thinking about the relations between patient data.

Establishing a diagnosis is an essential part of the treatment of a patient and an important educational objective in almost every virtual case. In order to come to the right diagnosis, every new gained aspect of the disease that the student has acquired has to be taken into account. In our program,  the user can open the dialog for choosing the most likely differential diagnoses at any time in the treatment of the virtual case, if the author of this case didn’t restrict  it. After the user has made a selection out of the list of the presented differential diagnoses, he or she can ask for a specific comment for each differential diagnosis. These comments are related to the symptoms and the results of medical tests the user has already acquired. This feedback informs the user about the importance of a symptom or a result of a test with respect to a special diagnosis and reinforces corresponding patterns of thinking. In order to offer this functionality the author has to assess each important correlation. Didactical elements such as questions, detailed comments and navigation guidance will be helpful in the training of a user’s understanding of diseases and will possibly improve his or her ability to treat patients. The project Docs ‘n Drugs The virtual clinic enables users from the field of medical sciences to train their ability of decision making in medicine. The web-based implementation and the design of the learning tool allows both an autodidactical way of learning as well as a distributed learning environment with an online human tutor.

 

Benefit in Attending Session:

Didactical elements are important components of every CBT-/WBT-system. Our objective is to offer a very specific feedback to the users interaction with the program which guides to the adequate train of thought. 

 

PRIMARY AUTHOR'S INFORMATION

Claudia Scheuerer

University of Ulm, ZIBMT

Albert-Einstein-Allee 47

89081 Ulm

Germany

Telephone Number: ++49-(0)731-5025484

Fax Number: ++49-(0)731-5025309

E-mail Address: claudia.scheuerer@zibmt.uni-ulm.de

 

Web Site: http://www.docs-n-drugs.de/

 

CO-AUTHORS' INFORMATION

1) Jochen Bernauer

2) Torsten Illmann, Michael Weber

3) Alke Martens, Alexander Seitz

 

Address(es):

1)Dept. for Medical Documentation and Computer Science, Fachhochschule Ulm, D-89075 Ulm, Germany

2)Dept. for Distributed Systems, University of Ulm, D-89069 Germany

3)Dept. of Artificial Intelligence, University of Ulm, D-89069 Ulm, Germany

 

Telephone Number(s):

1)++49-(0)731-5028184

2)++49-(0)731-5024140

3)++49-(0)731-5024113

 

E-mail Address(es):

bernauer@fh-ulm.de

torsten.illmann@informatik.uni-ulm.de

weber@informatik.uni-ulm.de

martens@ares.informatik.uni-ulm.de

seitz@ares.informatik.uni-ulm.de

 

Web Site(s): http://www.docs-n-drugs.de/