engleski

Ten Years of e-Physiology at the Zagreb University School of Medicine

The authors will present four evolutionary steps in the ten-year history of e-learning and e-teaching of Physiology at the Zagreb University School of Medicine (ZUSM) where traditional face-to-face (f2f) courses are still the mainstay. We stepped into the online world of teaching and learning in 1996 by publishing online the first edition of "Interactive Physiology" web pages - the first departmental web-site of ZUSM. The site was awarded with the 2nd price by the jury of the CARNet Users Conference CUC 1999 and was included into 100 best Croatian web sites in the year 1999 by the PCchip magazine. The next step ocurred in 1999 when the traditional physiology class was expanded with asynchronous online discussions and collaborative projects (1). We demonstrated that using an online forum could be very successful in teaching critical thinking in physiology because the Internet removes traditional time/place barriers. In 2002 the third step was made when the first hiybride (f2f/online) physiology elective course was launched (2). A significant portion of the learning activities were moved online and time traditionally spent in the classroom was reduced but not eliminated. The goal was to join the best features of f2f teaching with the best features of online learning to promote active independent learning and reduce class seat time. Student progress in the hiybride collaborative environment was positively affected by the use of technology. The advent of more sophisticated social software tools that emerged in recent times challenged us to do the fourth evolutionary move. In 2006 a wiki software was introduced with the aim of building a physiology learning community. The ten-year experience gained through described e-learning pilot projects gives us the right to say that educational opportunities of e-learning are very exciting. But before such prospects can be made institutions of higher education face significant obstacles that need to be addressed: viable e-learning strategies, teaching modalities that recognize new styles of learning, adequate faculty support structures and appropriate definitions of intellectual property rules.

e-learning; medical education; physiology

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