In the context of health science education, distance learning strategies are best suited to enhance student access to information and to encourage the development of information searching skills and behaviors in our students.  It is important to design teaching/learning activities that allow the student to participate in the way that is most valuable to them.  Our goal in using technology-enhanced learning is to improve access to information and facilitate the development of information gathering skills that students will use throughout their careers.  However, in the modern academic medical center there is often a scarcity of time and money which can thwart development of innovative technology based instructional materials.

The Pathology Education Instructional Resource (PEIR) ( http://peir.net  ) was designed to help busy faculty by providing resources for teaching and learning that are user-friendly and dynamic.  Our main goal in creating this resource was to facilitate development of materials that would augment the learning environment for our students.  Toward this end, the centerpiece of PEIR has been a Web-based collection of over 30,000 images and 8,000 test question items that faculty can use for developing digital teaching materials and examinations.  In its original incarnation, the PEIR was a success with faculty and residents who mainly used the system to find exam questions as well as digital images to add to PowerPoint presentations. 

We also developed an online authoring system to enable faculty to create new online educational materials as well as port existing materials to the Web.  Through a Web browser, faculty can access the PEIR Digital Library and search for images, test questions, or existing instructional materials created by other faculty using the integrated authoring system.  Selected images, questions, or materials can be added to a shopping cart for download or for use in authoring online materials.  Once materials have been gathered into the shopping cart, faculty can begin the authoring process.  Online materials are created by using a form-driven template to construct individual Web pages.  Each page may contain multiple images, interactive questions, and faculty-authored text.  Pages are combined into chapters and chapters into books.  A given page may be used in multiple chapters and a given chapter in multiple books.  Further, each author is allowed to use materials created by other authors.  Finally, each book can be password restricted by its author, each of whom is given permission to manage his or her own users/passwords.  This authoring system and the "Learning Modules" have been used in the Pathology courses at our school.  Student evaluations indicate enthusiastic support for this online material - with "ease of access" being one of the favorite features.

We have also developed a Medical Education Resource for Instructional Technology (MERIT) (http://uabmerit.net ) with links to resources important for faculty and students interested in technology and informatics.  Additional resources on the PEIR Web site include our Interactive Pathology Laboratory (IPLab) with over 100 cases covering topics important to general pathology.  These resources are available for anyone who would like to use them for nonprofit educational activities.