New Perspectives in Science Education
HIPON Project: Acquiring Medical Experience through an e-learning Platform. A New Perspective in Pathology Education
Olga Riccioni, 1st Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece). School of Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome (Italy)
Charalambos Vrasidas, Centre for the Advancement of Research and Development in Educational Technology LTD, Nicosia (Cyprus)
Luka Brcic, Institute of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb (Croatia)
Goce Armenski, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje (Macedonia, The former Yugoslav Republic of)
Ljupcho Antovski, Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje (Macedonia, The former Yugoslav Republic of)
Sven Seiwerth, Institute of Pathology, School of Medicine, University of Zagreb (Croatia)
Annemieke Smeets, Department of Pathology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center (The Netherlands)
J. Han J.M. van Krieken, Department of Pathology, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center (The Netherlands)
Andreas C. Lazaris, 1st Department of Pathology, School of Medicine, The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece)
Abstract
It is a common idea that achieving excellence, once medical students face professional practice, poses a challenge in education [1]. To achieve this goal in medical education, the prospect of projecting professional experience through an e-learning toolkit, is here being proposed as an original teaching strategy.
An educational project on histopathology entitled “ICT eModules on HistoPathology: a useful online tool for students, researchers and professionals - HIPON”, co-financed by the Lifelong Learning Program of the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), The Commission of the European Union, has been launched at the beginning of 2013.
The project has already resulted in an open resource, multi-language, e-learning platform which aims to offer a valuable teaching instrument to medical students, researchers and professionals. The use of e-learning tools, through which students gradually become active professionals and no longer passive recipients of knowledge, has been acknowledged as a considerable improvement in learning [2]. Furthermore, HIPON aims to convey among the extensive amount of available data, the essential information which can be transformed into medical experience, and thus to promote professional thinking in pathology by means of new teaching strategies which make use of modern technology in the presentation of selected case studies. Taking advantage of modern image technology, the program provides a wide selection of enlargeable microscope high resolution images, supported by educational videos and relevant virtual slides. The latter attempt to make the text meaningful helping users understand and consolidate their knowledge. The image-based presentation of several case studies represents the most important and innovative section of the project; step by step it reproduces the same diagnostic procedure that expert pathologists follow in everyday life, asking the users to implement it themselves through the platform. Based on the principle that clinical scenarios make students more prepared and knowledgeable [1] when they face patients in real life, HIPON case studies supply users with the opportunity to apply their knowledge, deepen their understanding and ameliorate their skills.
By doing all this, HIPON aims to make end-users able to think as experienced pathologists and develop proper competencies. In our opinion, this project aims to represent a New Prospective in Pathology Education. Taking advantage of this as well as of other continually developing advances in learning modalities, students’ learning and performance will hopefully be widely improved.
