The purpose of the workshop was to identify types of teaching resources the basic science participants wanted to find on the Web. The types of information might include: lecture content, animations to clarify or enhance a lecture, images for lecture or testing, or cases for clinical relevance. Other objectives might include questions for self-assessment, information about specific diseases, tools for an exercise or videos of patients or procedures. There was a brief discussion of criteria for selecting material relevant to the level of the group you are teaching as well to as verification of the timeliness of the resources and the credentials of the authors. If assigning the material to be used for a course one must evaluate the instructional design, interface design and ease of navigation. Depending on the type of Internet access, certain materials will not perform adequately and should be avoided. For example some video should only be used from a high-speed university line and not by modem. Also some Web resources have browser and plug-in specific requirements which might discourage novices. All of these were discussed. Once a resource has been defined where it fits into your curriculum must be determined. Is it to substitute for a lecture or enhance a lecture? Is it to be read instead of a textbook or just to add clinical relevance? Preview it with students and see if it is acceptable (this usually means it is core material that will enhance their performance on your exam or help them prepare for national examinations.) If it is not required, students will not use it. The best strategy is to reward them for using it by including material from the Web in some of the examination questions. Finding resources requires a bit of sleuthing. Using Google without a refined strategy is inefficient. Other ways for locating good resources were listed and include looking at additional links provided from other university course pages, associations, disease related societies, queries to listservs, and some partial catalogues of websites, which all too quickly change locations. Once resources are located they can be organized in folders by topics.
A sample of how to do this was provided. In addition, each computer
in the workshop used for the hands-on exercise had with it a desktop html-document
with a sample of bookmarks from a variety of basic science disciplines
(see hyperlinked "handout" above). Participants could check these
resources during the session. This also demonstrated how bookmarks,
at least in Netscape, can be annotated and several lines of comment added
to help distinguish and further categorize the site. These can then
be shared with students or colleagues. Bookmarks can also be searched
in Netscape for content or URL making retrieval easy if they have been
annotated and titled. Passwords and logins that may be required can
also be stored in the information field.
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