Edumed Institute/Instituto Edumed

The Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health
Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil


Research Abstract


New Ways to Teach Neuroscience: Integrating Traditional Teaching Style with Instructional Technologies


Cardoso, S.H.; Sabbatini, R.M.E.

Center of Teleneurosciences, The Edumed Institute for Education in Medicine and Health, Campinas/SP, Brazil



As brain sciences have shed light into many aspects of human behavior and its disorders, interest of health science students in this area has greatly increased, particularly in disciplines such as physical therapy and education, speech therapy, psychotherapy and others. However, most courses in these areas, particularly in developing countries, have poor teaching programs in basic and applied neuroscience, with traditional teaching approaches showing low levels of learning. In this sense, neuroscience educators have asked fundamental questions such as how to provide opportunities to health students to attend a neuroscience course, and what kind of support environments and educational strategies are more appropriate for a better learning in such area. One important answer has been found with the integration of traditional teaching and instructional technologies. The Center of Teleneurosciences has the aim of developing new technologies applied to teaching and learning in basic and behavioral neurosciences. In this work, we describe our experience in the use of several strategies based in active learning carried out via Internet or computers that may be used to improve the teaching of neuroscience to health undergraduate or post-graduate students. The main activities are as follows:1) Interactive Virtual Lab of neuroanatomy; 2) highly participative on-line neuroanatomy quizzes 3) virtual visits to university and labs 4) case-based learning. They have been able to provide students with a more practical and interesting approach to neuroanatomy, such as the application of theoretical knowledge to real situations (diseases, experiments, media information, and scientific discoveries). This work elaborates and implements a technology-based instructional design which serves the educational needs of health care practitioners and demonstrates its effectiveness and attractiveness via unstructured and structured questioning of participating students.
                


Presented at:

Proceedings of the Society of Neuroscience Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, USA, 2008.
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Last Updated:  6 September 2010

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