E-learning in Health: the North American

Experience

Dr. Norm Friesen

Simon Fraser University

Overview

• General comments• Learning through play: SAGE Project -public• Learning through visualization: Animation -

nursing & medicine• Learning through simulation: e-patient -

emergency & primary care• Learning infrastructure: CanCore - access to

resources

General Comments

• The healthcare sector is frequently an early adopter of new information technologies for learning, education and training (or “e-learning”).

• Sample of innovative projects in Canada and the USA

• Specific resources and how they can be brought together

General Comments: Public Funding

• North America: often Project and Initiative-based

Canada: Notable new coordination: • CCL Knowledge Centre on health and

Learning http://www.ccl-cca.ca/english/know /health.asp

USA: Notable new funding from Homeland Security:

• $40 billion annually

SAGE Project: Learning through Play

• "Simulation and Advanced Gaming Environments” for Learning

• fields of health promotion, health care, and health education.

• Researching the effectiveness of games, simulations and other new media for learning

SAGE Project- Games provide motivation, structure and“authenticity” (e.g practice in roles, in simulatedsettings -- All recogniz-ed as importantfor learning

SAGE: Contagion

“…an epidemic is threatening and you, a young medical student, are the only one who can save Lower Pyramidia.”

Contagionhttp://contagion.edu.yorku.ca

SAGE: Contagion, con’t

• Role Playing game for 9- to 12- year olds

• Roles include a street doctor, a health enforcement officer, and a virus hunter

• To educate and prepare students for epidemics such as avian bird flu or SARS.

Learning through visualization

For medicine and nursing education, close supervision on the apprenticeship model is important. However, practice and learning cannot place patients at risk.

Biomedical Communications, University of Toronto

• http://www.bmc.med.utoronto.ca• Two sample projects featured

Visualization: Pain Recognition

Elisheva Marcus

Visualization: Pain Recognition

Elisheva Marcus

Structures Associated with HIV

Visualization: Sources

A Dynamic Three-Dimensional Visualization of the Capsid Protein Lattice Structure that Forms During the Assembly of Immature HIV-1 Particles: Ken Vanderstoemp

• http://www.bmc.med.utoronto.ca/bmc/media/vanderstoep.html

Pain Recognition in Neonates: Elsheva Marcus

• http://www.bmc.med.utoronto.ca/~elisheva/mrp/

Learning through Simulation: Sim-Patient

Homeland Security and Battlefield training:

• Case-based scenarios featuring a traumatic incident or medical condition, and one or more virtual patients.

• The caregiver can navigate and survey the scene, as well as assess, converse and administer care to the virtual patient.

Sim-Patient, con’t

• multiple-casualty scenarios

• triage and casualty care, with each casualty having: – specified injury models– independent physiological simulation– signs and symptoms that change with the

patient's evolving status

Learning Infrastructures

• Many resources available for specific educational contexts and purposes.

• No easy way to connect these resources with instructors, students, customers, course designers

• Results in expensive, one-off efforts, whether for sale or for free

A solution

• Systematic collection and labelling of these resources (or learning objects) in online collections (or repositories)

• Labelling or tagging of learning objects through metadata

• Learning Object Metadata& CanCore enables access

CAREO.org

• University of California, LA; University of Utah; University of Oklahoma

• Mission: provide free digital resources of the highest quality that meet the needs of today's health sciences educators.

• 21,500 cataloged resources• Employs a rigorous review process.

healcentral.org