An e-learning experience for medical education in Mediterranean countries

Information technology tools and environments have successfully been employed in supporting specific aspects of medical education. Such an approach was exploited in the IntraMEDnet project, financially supported by European Union in the program of Interreg III B Archimed, which involves the development of a distributed pool of specialized educational modules in state-of-the-art scientific issues related to medicine and biological sciences. Over-specialized scientists, from different institutions, individually developed related educational modules which have been combined dynamically on a virtual classroom on the web in order to create integrated educational units. Each such complete educational unit can be shaped to support self-directed (or expert instructed) problem-based learning, enhancing patient-oriented approach to medical education. The project also considered the potential of this virtual collection of educational modules to grow into an integrated environment for transferring the learning process to the e-class. A web questionnaire have been developed in order to evaluate the e-learning platform and the learning object, produced in the project. The satisfaction of user and technical aspects have been investigated. The results of the study suggest a major employment of this new methodology of education.