Fostering e-learning in medical education: the EuroVacc team experience

Theme: The value of Distance, Flexible and ICT-based Education in specific contexts

Context: II - Post-Secondary or University Education

This work focuses on the approach of the EuroVacc e-learning core-team, an interdisciplinary workgroup dedicated to the development of e-learning projects in the medical fields. The group is running three major projects: Immunology Online (IOL), OCTAVE (Online Collaborative Training for AIDS Vaccine Evaluation) and OOL (Oncology Online). IOL is a web-based curriculum that draws expertise from the five Swiss medical faculties and targets medical and graduate students. IOL employs a “blended learning” strategy (face-to-face and e-learning) as an alternative to traditional lectures. OCTAVE is a pilot e-learning program initiated by EuroVacc and the HIV Vaccine Trials Network to deliver training in priority areas such as good clinical and laboratory practices, HIV pathogenesis and vaccinology. OCTAVE targets the need for on-site, face-toface training visits (i.e. training in laboratory methods). Oncology Online aims at integrating clinical and molecular aspects of cancer. IOL, OCTAVE and OOL are hosted by the Bio-med platform (www.bio-med.ch) of the Swiss Virtual Campus program. The platform scaffolds a Learning Management System for creation, updating, revision and delivery of web content. It supports an active and flexible e-learning environment, tailored to the needs of a diverse clientele. Our approach has been tested in multiple contexts, namely problem based learning, article based learning, lectures and, more recently, protocol-based learning. Each project counts with the commitment of experts from a variety of collaborating organizations, whom provide relevant material in basic and applied biomedical sciences.