Multimedia Educational Tool Research Articles

Multimedia education in headache: the European Neurological Network.

The European Neurological Network is a European Economic Community supported project. The purpose of the project was to develop a multimedia educational tool for general practitioners in order to improve their management of sleep disorders, epilepsy and headache. The project involves approximately one hundred engineers and physicians from Belgium, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. This paper concerns the multimedia educational tool on headache. The system consists of five different modules, i.e. classification, clinical data, headache tutorial, diagnostic headache diary and nomenclature. It is possible to move between the modules both vertically and horizontally. The headache classification of the International Headache Society is provided in full text as a work of reference. This classification is used world wide and has been adopted by International Classification of Diseases 10 Neurological Adaptation (ICD-10 NA) and the World Health Organisation. The clinical data concentrate on migraine and tension-type headache, the two most common headache disorders, but data on familial hemiplegic migraine, cluster headache, drug-induced headache and secondary headaches are also available. The headache tutorial consists of case records that the user can test their diagnostic abilities on. The diagnostic headache diary is an expert system on headache diagnostics. It can be filled in during a consultation in order to provide the headache diagnosis or it can be printed and used by the headache patient to record headache attacks and medicine consumption. The nomenclature module provides an explanation of words and expressions used in the system.

A WWW computer integrated manufacturing environment for rapid prototyping and education

This paper describes an overview of a system integration project in which the development of a multimedia educational tool for designing simple mechanical parts has resulted in new procedures for Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM). The new procedures utilize the Internet for seamless integration of Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP), and Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM). The result is a WWW-based CIM environment that not only promotes Design for Manufacturability, but seeks to decrease manufacturing time in a rapid prototyping service based on milling (Sarma 1995, Sarma et al., 1996). Furthermore, the environment utilizes multimedia to display process histories which are generated through the feedback of sensor data collected during fabrication. Remote designers can use this knowledge to monitor the manufacturing process and to redesign if necessary. The paper begins with the description of a specific case study called Reuleaux! , which allows students to design interesting parts while at the same time simplifying some of the downstream process planning and fixturing issues that occur in machining.

Multimedia communication: quo vadis ?

SUMMARY New interactive multimedia products including CD-ROM, video, online service and Web-TV have grown rapidly over the past several years. Since the acceptance of the World Wide Web (WWW) as a global standard for information, a medical online environment has evolved creating new forms of communications in medicine including desktop videoconferencing, multimedia interactive educational tools, online representation of literature, bibliographic databases and tools for authoring new-generation scientific publications. But the general and health over-information and the use of computer technology in medicine have already changed our communication behaviour, introducing fractal communication and the use of infoids. Concerns have been raised that these developments may on one hand lead to disinformation and on the other may have a significant impact on communication between patient and doctor. The new interactive electronic media and the entirely new forms of communication are discussed.