Thursday 26 June 2008

Electronic Health Care/Medical libraries: a student instrument created with Articulate Engage


At ITM we are dabbling with Articulate Engage. One of our main concerns is trying to figure out whether Articulate Engage is something we can use in low resource areas.
Articulate Engage is producing Flash content and as such is cross-platform, but the files are still very heavy. This list of Electronic Health Care/Medical Libraries on the Internet was inserted into Articulate Engage by Carlos Kiyan and is almost 13MB. Nevertheless it works with dial-up connections as well because of the swf-technology of prebuffering.

Articulate Engage has some nice features:
  • it is indeed really easy to use and it generates Flash content (swf) with just one push on a button.
  • It has a really neat 'search' function which does pick-up text that is included in the different chapters.
  • It allows you to insert different media, which of-course increases or decreases the volume of the generated swf.
  • it demands some actions from the learner.
  • the helpdesk is quick and they really helped us out with more extensive examples we are trying to develop. A great helpdesk is a huge surplus.
On the down side: the fixed animation is rather dull and you just know that this type of animation will look dated after a couple of years.

This list of medical libraries was made to make it easier for the students to find relevant medical resources. The response on the use of this type of instrument was very positive. At first the list was more limited, but thanks to the input of the students it grew (this adding of relevant sources was part of the learning process they had to go through). This list is used in our online course of eSCART (Short Course in AntiRetroviral Therapy) which is currently successfully being taken by a group of international students.

If you know of other libraries, feel free to add them, we will gladly add them to the list.

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