UIC Eye Pathology - Interactive Distributed Education

Interactive Tele-education: Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between interactive tele-education and tele-medicine?

Telemedicine has captured the public's imagination. Many Americans have seen television commercials showing specialists in large academic medical centers assisting primary care physicians in remote locations.

Interactive tele-education extends interaction between physicians to the classroom, clinic, or laboratory. We use patient materials to teach, but in the setting of tele-education, we don't make on-line diagnoses. We therefore avoid the muddy medicolegal issues of licensure across state or national boundaries.

Is this a recognized form of instruction?

Our program with the Department of Ophthalmology at West Virginia University, now in its third year, provides twenty one-hour interactive sessions per academic year and is accredited by the Residency Review Committee of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Is interactive tele-education expensive?

Not at all when the expenses of this form of instruction are compared with the alternatives. We use interactive tele-communications to teach a specialized area of ophthalmology, ophthalmic pathology. Many institutions cannot afford to hire an ophthalmic pathologist onto their faculties.

An ophthalmology department lacking coverage for ophthalmic pathology might consider

Sending residents away to a course off campus.

While they are away, they aren't available to staff the clinic. Moreover, they won't be learning from material in their own institution.

Institutions that subscribe to our teaching programs are taught with material generated by their residents, supplemented by a rich teaching collection at the University of Iowa.

Bringing in guest faculty. An expensive solution when one considers the cost of travel and the honorarium. And the visiting professor can only stay for a limited period of time ... certainly not through the academic year.

Our programs in distance learning, using tele-education technology, provide for consultations between students and instructor on a daily basis by e-mail or telephone throughout the academic year. And tele-education is only one aspect of the services that we provide to distant sites.

Subscribing institutions have access to a variety of instructional materials on our web site. And our interactive CD-ROM program, Pathology of the Eye, provides a 50-hour basic science curriculum in ophthalmic pathology.

What technology is required?

We currently use CODECs (Coder-Decoder devices) over T1 lines. Because we are teaching pathology of the eye, we actually use 1/4 T lines for our sessions, reducing cost. The subscribing institution also requires a CODEC and tele-communication setup.

Dr. Folberg is teaching ophthalmology residents and practicing ophthalmologists in Vienna, Austria. He is sitting before a multimedia console, which permits him to alternate between the display of microscopic slides, gross tissue specimens, radiological images, printed material, and computer-generated text and animations. He is facing a teleconferencing unit by which he can see his students. He can also view what his students are seeing. Students and instructor therefore communicate as if they are in the same room.

We are investigating other methods of interactive communications including interactive web-based technologies for our programs.

Can I see it in action?

A six minute videotape of actual sessions is available. Contact us if you would like to receive a copy.

We welcome guests who wish to come to Chicago to view one of these sessions and discuss instructional methods or technology. Contact us to schedule a visit!