Digital media for distance education

Excerpt

Distance medical education via e-learning media have come to the forefront with the recognition that academic expertise and knowledge has to be made accessible to those clinicians most underserved because of geographical constraints, travel costs or lack of available expertise and time. Although centralized face-to-face courses maintain their value, they are conducted at a high financial cost, for a limited number of participants. As noted by Carruth and Carruth [1], e-learning “provides one potential route by which to overturn the twin barriers of lack of time and geographical isolation encountered by many learners.” The challenges that outreach e-learning address are thus accessibility to quality instruction, asynchronous training (applicable especially to settings with high staff turnover) and ongoing learning via regular updates. …