A. Sampedro, R. Rubio, A. Pavón, D. Suárez, A. S. Gimeno, Y. Del Cura, A. M. Nistal.

Abstract

WELLPATH is a friendly virtual environment for training/learning in Pathology which is being used as back-up material in attending education as well as for Open and Distance Learning (ODL)

Its objective is to make multimedia training material available for trainers and learners, and in the future, to share this contents with other universities and organisations from Europe, forming a collaborative network.

WELLPATH is already working in the University of Oviedo, and accessible for everyone in the Internet address http://www10.uniovi.es

The environment contains different kinds of teaching material, and it is organised in tutorials, clinical sessions, seminars and short courses.

The tutorials are expositions of concrete themes, orientated at supporting of students of Medicine, they are objects with their own controls for navigating, animations, sound, notes and index. Titles available are: Reactions of Hypersensitivity, Basic Mechanisms of Gene Expression, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), Cysts and Fibrooseous Lesions of Maxillae and Chromosome Analysis Techniques in Oncology: Kariotyping, FISH and CGH. Reactions, Neoplastic Transformation and Basic Mechanisms of Gene Expression.

The clinical sessions are divided into four parts, clinical case presentation, discussion forum of the presentation, clinical case resolution, and discussion of the resolution. Both presentation and resolution include own reference to bibliography.

The seminars are developed in web pages with HTML and JavaScript, used in the subject Anatomic Pathology, from the second cycle of Medicine. Their structure is: Learning objectives, Clinical history, Diagnostic reasoning and references.

The short courses are modules with more information divided in sessions or lectures. The sessions are composed of objects incorporating images, audio, and animation displays with their own controls, similar to the tutorials. At present a module about Gynecologic Cytology has been prepared.