Design for learning: deconstructing virtual patient activities

Abstract

Digital technologies are used in almost every aspect of contemporary health professional education (HPE) but our understanding of their true potential as instructional tools rather than administrative tools has not significantly advanced in the last decade. One notable exception to this has been the rise of the ‘virtual patient’ as an educational intervention in HPE. This article attempts to deconstruct the virtual patient concept by developing a model of virtual patients as artifacts with intrinsic encoded properties and emergent constructed properties that build on the core concept of ‘activity’.

Notes

1. The RECAL Project is a partnership between the Lord Dowding Fund and the University of Edinburgh to re-engineer computer-assisted learning materials as web-based activities consisting of a series of interlinked learning objects – www.recal.mvm.ed.ac.uk

2. Developed by Dr David Topps as part of the PINE Project; this virtual patient is publicly available at http://pine.nosm.ca/mstartnode.asp?mapid=193