Mindful of the still-growing interest on the part of health educators to expand and develop the use of distance education methods, The American Center for Study of Distance Education (ACSDE) is happy to present this collection of articles.

The contents of this book are articles submitted to The American Journal of Distance Education or the ACSDE’s electronic journal DEOSNEWS. There are an equal number of articles that have already been published in the AJDE and others that are published here for the first time.

While the articles in this Book of Readings deal with various health professions and deal with various aspects of both teaching and learning, they fall into two sets in terms of technology. In the first part of the book, the communication technology used in most of the studies reported was group-focused teleconferencing—i.e., one-way video/two-way audio, two-way video or two-way audioconferencing. In the second part of the book the technology used is the more individually focused Internet/World Wide Web. This dichotomy directly mirrors the trends in technology used in distance education during the past fifteen years.

(I do urge readers, however, to look beyond the particular technology that was used to link learners and instructors, vitally important and intriguing though it may be. Take note of the findings and consider their possible relevance in other settings independent of the particular technology used. As a practicing distance teacher myself now online, I am frequently reminded how similar are the characteristics and problems of learners and the dynamics of interaction between learners and between instructor and learner to what I knew when teaching by audioconference, videoconference, or even by print-based correspondence. There is a deep pool of knowledge about these and other distance teaching and learning issues available for those who take the time and trouble to tease out the lessons from the research.)

The book contains reports covering nearly twenty years of experience, from states across the nation and some from abroad, from a range of health professions and examining teaching practices, communication tools, student attitudes and achievements, and even a glimpse at some of the politics involved.

Clearly there is so much more to be studied and researched than has yet been accomplished. My principal hope is that what is read here may stimulate teachers and students to make hypotheses and to articulate questions for their own research. No less than in the health sciences themselves, research in distance education depends on each generation building on the discoveries and insights and guesses and explorations of their predecessors. A generation today is very short-lived, and the need for more research is urgent. I hope this collection will inspire many more to become involved.

—Michael G. Moore

Table of Contents

Preface

Distance Education in the Health Professions: A Collection of Research
   Michael G. Moore

Articles (Link to Abstracts)

Distance Education via Teleconferencing

A Historical Overview of Telecommunications in the Health Care Industry
   Joseph S. Anderson

Distance Education by Interactive Videoconferencing in a Family Practice Residency Center
   Orlando F. Mills, James F. Bates, Vicki Pendleton, Kathleen Lese, and Michael Tatarko

Telemedicine for Patient Education
   David L. Byers, Jr., Cheryl Hilgenberg, and Dent M. Rhodes

Student Perceptions of Satisfaction and Opportunities for Critical Thinking in Distance Education by Interactive Video
   Cheryl Hilgenberg and William Tolone

Transactional Distance and Interactive Television in the Distance Education of Health Professionals
   Whitney Rogers Bischoff, Sarah W. Bisconer, Barbara M. Kooker, and Lanell C. Woods

Use of Interactive Television for Outreach Nursing Education
   Marilyn B. Major and Donea L. Shane

Persistence in a Distance Learning Program: A Case in Pharmaceutical Education
   Nancy F. Fjortoft

Student Support via Audio Teleconferencing: Psycho-Educational Workshops for Post-Bachelor Nursing Students
   Vivian Lalande

Distance Education via the Internet and the World Wide Web

The Pros and Cons of Web-Based Distance Education in Nursing
   Susan M. Jacob

Web-Based Instruction in Medical Education: A Rationale
   Veronica E. Michaelsen

Interaction in Virtual Versus Traditional Problem-Based Learning Classrooms: A Pilot Study in Education for Health Professionals
   Nikos Mattheos, Katarina Wretlind, Anders Nattestad, and Rolf Attström

Distance Education for Dentists: Improving the Quality of Online Instruction
   Heiko Spallek, Peter Berthold, Diarmuid B. Shanley, and Rolf Attström

A Retrospective Look at an Internet-Based Pharmacotherapy Prototype: Do the Same Conclusions Apply Today?
   Stanley W. Carson, Pamela U. Joyner, and Gail M. Darden

A Vendor-Free Option for “Online” Content Delivery of a Distance Education Course in Nursing
   Linda Goodwin

Providing a Human Biology Laboratory for Distant Learners
   Don Naber and Glenn LeBlanc

Academic Dishonesty in Distance Learning Programs: An Exploration of Pharmacy Education
   Nancy Fjortoft, Lynn Patton, Nahed Khayyat, and Lisa Weigand

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