Last month we produced our first multimedia issue and we have received an overwhelmingly positive response to this enhancement to your e-journal. We would like to thank you all for your encouraging responses. But we have listened to the needs of those too who do not have a Broadband connection and we have decided to keep a healthy balance between simple text and multimedia. From now onwards, we will try to include a few PowerPoint and audio presentations in each issue. The major part of the journal will continue to remain in simple text but where ever possible we will use images, sound and video to improve your learning experience. Also, we will provide a simple text version of multimedia presentations for those who like to read the text!
Multimedia plays an important role in education. The use of graphics, sounds and videos together with interactivity can enhance the user experience many folds. I remember a recent study conducted in Medical College of Wisconsin about the use of multimedia education tools for medical students. The results were very surprising and I would like to share with you its findings:
Methods: Sixteen (16) third-year medical (M3) students were exposed to three educational interventions: a one-hour cardiac auscultation lecture that featured computer-generated heart sounds, a PDA-based heart sounds/murmur form and a web-based cardiac auscultation program. Thirteen (13) internal medicine (IM) residents who served as a comparison group attended a cardiac auscultation lecture identical in content and format to the student lecture. At the end of the study period, we evaluated the ability of both groups to accurately identify heart sounds and cardiac murmurs via a twelve-item performance-based examination utilizing computer-generated heart sounds.
Results: Following our teaching interventions, M3 students correctly identified 80% of the computer-simulated heart sounds/murmurs while the comparison group of IM residents accurately detected 60% of the same cardiac findings (p
Conclusions: The combination of traditional lecture and multi-media, technology-based, self-directed learning tools appears to be an effective and efficient strategy for teaching and reinforcing cardiac auscultation skills to third year medical students.
There have been many other studies which have documented the role of multimedia in education and nearly all have found that the use of multimedia makes learning easier and more fun. We hope you will enjoy the multimedia additions to your favorite e-journal, Homeopathy for Everyone. We also look forward to more such contribution from your end.
Now something about this issue. We have dubbed the February issue of Homeopathy for Everyone ‘Star- Studded’, and when you go down the list of articles, you will surely see why!. In this issue you will find articles from the likes of George Vithoulkas, Dana Ullman, Jawahar Shah, Rajan Sankaran, Mellisa Burch, David Little and many others. There is an interesting and heady mix of articles and cases with many of them focusing on Vital Sensation, Kingdom Classification and Miasms. We would like to thank all the contributors for their generous support and encouragement.
I hope you will enjoy reading the articles in this issue as much as we have enjoyed putting them together. Do send me your feedback at [email protected] about various articles in this issue.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours Sincerely,
Dr. Manish Bhatia
— Chief Editor —
Homeopathy for Everyone
