Medantic Technology is an eLearning company that has developed a suite of authoring tools, digital asset management technologies, and presentation platforms for building and delivering high-quality, Web-based, multi-media medical educational material. In partnership with Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, The Henry M. Jackson Foundation, and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS, the U.S. military's medical school), we have developed a Web-based course on the Medical Response to Weapons of Mass Destruction. The course consists of both Flash-based didactic lectures and interactive, dynamic case simulations covering a wide variety of topics relative to real-world biological, chemical, and nuclear warfare and/or terrorist threats.

The instructional methods are 1) didactic lecture-style presentations and 2) case simulations.  The platform permits students to watch lectures before, during, and/or after doing a case, and as many times, as they want. Students have the flexibility of determining content sequencing (i.e. students may view lecture material before, during, and/or after completing case simulation sessions and final assessments). Therefore, learning methods can be determined, to a degree, by end-users. Students are tracked through an integrated learning management system and successful completion of the course will be certified by USUHS. The target audiences are healthcare students and providers.

The course platform was built with a variety of modern technologies as needed for rapid deployment and delivery to low-bandwidth users. Lectures are Flash-based with streaming audio and animation as well as still photography. Users can navigate within and between lectures at their own pace and convenience. The case platform uses a combination of HTML/DHTML/JavaScript to create the graphical user interface. All case-specific content is retrieved dynamically from a SQL Server 2000 relational database using ColdFusion 5.0 Server and page scripting. User interactions are written real-time by ColdFusion into the SQL database and recorded for retrieval at anytime through the student's course account. Cases can be book-marked to allow for interrupted sessions.

The course will formally launch on March 1, 2002 and the 12 lectures and 10 cases will have taken just 4 months to develop, from conception to launch, using rapid development technology and online authoring tools.

We anticipate that, through online user surveys, high user acceptance will be demonstrated. We will also determine correlations between user-chosen learning method (sequencing of cases and lectures), student level (e.g. medical student vs. nurse vs. mid-level practitioner vs. practicing physician), post-test scores (and number of tries to achieve a passing score), and user satisfaction levels. The results will be presented.

BENEFIT TO PARTICIPANTS ATTENDING SESSION:

We will prove the concept that high-quality, multi-media, Web-based educational courseware can be developed rapidly in order to address critical educational needs in a timely fashion. We will demonstrate the product courseware and show the integration of two proven instructional methods in a flexible platform, whereby student users can determine the sequencing of methods that they feel works best for them. Finally, we will discuss how participants can adopt these techniques and this technology for building their own courseware.

Gregory A. Thompson, M.D.
1352 E. Logan Ave.
Salt Lake City, UT 84105
Phone: 801-718-4181
Fax: 305-402-0144
Email: greg.thompson@globalemedicine.com  
Website: http://www.medantic.com/

CO-AUTHORS:
Terry K. Clark, M.D.
1352 E. Logan Ave.
Salt Lake City, UT 84105
Phone: 801-485-9937
801-244-7287
Email: terry.clark@globalemedicine.com