What is the background of InfoFrames?
How are InfoFrames designed?
What do InfoFrames look like?
What topics are available now?
The traditional presentation or bundling of information in useful ways for easy learning and for efficient, expository transmission is well established throughout educational venues. For written materials, the usual vehicles are books, reports and discussion papers, best produced with printed illustrations. For oral transmission, expository lectures, seminars and discussion groups, best presented with projected slides, videos and other visual-aids are utilized. For both, interactivity, either by interruption of the presentation or by invitation, is verbal queries and answers. After both methods of presentation, formal evaluation is conducted from interval reports or at the end of the course of study or the completion of the chapter, etc. These may be aided by the class interactions with the teacher, reports from teaching assistants, and informal discussions with the evaluator(s).
In medicine, and in other professions, e.g., law, the established style of clinical teaching utilizes case presentations, an approach quite different from the above. Following the basic sciences portion of medical school, usually two years in duration during which the expository style of teaching prevails, the focus is shifted toward the patient who represents the illustrative material for the educational process. The fund of knowledge that has been learned, and that yet to be acquired, is applied to the particular needs presented by the patient. Thus, the role of the clinical faculty is the joint identification with the student of the patients problem, and the pursuit of reasonable remedies required for obtaining relief.
In pursuit of the dual goals of assisting the individual and practicing the approach to the patient, both student and professor solicit relevant information according to the following plan. First, in an initial evaluation, the patient's Chief Complaint is solicited as the beginning for the Present Illness. Other areas of historical interest include the Past History of Medical/Surgical Illnesses and Reproductive History, the Social History, the Family History and the Review of Symptoms. For subsequent contacts, the relevant history (Symptoms), the physical examination (Observations), differential diagnosis list, and plans for laboratory tests or imaging studies (Assessment), and prescribing appropriate therapy (Plan) are the organization of notations. This constitutes the SOAP approach adopted nearly universally during the past 30 years in American Medicine for progress notations. In both settings, students and professors apply the basic and clinical sciences they have and are learning, delving further when necessary into new information in journals, books and video tapes or CD-ROMs. The information about the patient's past history and present studies represent a multimodal accumulation of historical notes from prior doctors and hospitals, including procedures and drug therapies, pathology sections, ultrasound graphs, X-radiographs and perhaps, videotapes. Once reviewed and confirmed by the patient, and perhaps the referring physician, a set of different possibilities for explaining the patients problem(s) is projected (differential diagnosis) and a plan for further evaluation and/or a therapeutic approach can be offered.
As multimodal educational modules are being adopted more broadly, and particularly as the World Wide Web emerges as a low-cost technology supporting interactivity as an important operational theme, new approaches to presentation and evaluation schema must be considered in 3D/multimedia formats. The studies of Richard E. Mayer and colleagues of the University of California-Santa Barbara, indicate that students who receive coordinated presentations of explanations about scientific topics in verbal and visual formats consistently generate over 75 percent more creative solutions on problem-solving tests than did those who received only the verbal. Their effectiveness was improved by over 50 percent by having contiguous exposure to the topics. The design of the modules was very important; incorporation of explanative illustrations, with captions that summarize the major actions depicted in the illustrations and verbal labels pointing to the major parts described in the captions is crucial for integration of visual and auditory cues. AnimationÕs without concurrent narration fail to promote meaningful learning. This beneficial effect of multimedia learning was most effective for students with low prior knowledge about the subject and with those having high spatial learning capabilities, established independently ( Mayer, R.E., 1997.) A useful discussion of the current methods of 2D presentations of information is contained in Visual Tools for Learning, by David Hyerle (1996).
The key concept in design-based learning is the generation by students of a body of understanding created by them from available information, augmented with illustrative materials for exploration and confirmation. The latter is gained with both amplifying information and with immediate evaluations.
In the current formulation of information frames for Virtual Creatures, the identification and definition of a single concept, it's description or explanation with graphical and audio representations are followed immediately by evaluation of a students grasp of the information through problem-solving applications. Feedback to the student is immediate. Student self-evaluations and evaluation of the content of the frames complete the exercise. Links to related topics, also as graphical and audible representations developed as Information Frames, are available to the student for amplification or further inquiry. Thus a two-dimensional (X/Y), frame-based mosaic of such learning devices, augmented in a third (Z) dimension containing various illustrations and evaluations, comprises an entire body of knowledge and related interactive links. The scope of the information that may be included in such building blocks is unconstrained. Recent discovery of a related synthesis (1992) by Cimino, et al., the use of a semantic network called a "Concept Space" reinforces the conceptualization of our approach.
Examples of Proposed Information Frames
Information frames are adaptable to offer content at multiple levels from complex to simple topics (see Outline of Biological Systems). For the basic structural components of locomotion, we include the topics of bones, joints, muscles, nerves and circulation. For presenting the many, many facts about these anatomic structures and their function, we propose the following organizational template: The topic covered by the frame is presented in the header, and the location (address) of the frame is given by the frame number (#). A set of frames describes a concept map with its many links to other topics and frames. Italics indicate links to related frames elsewhere and ( ) indicates human names.
Example of a Frame:
Amphibians.html
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Hyerle, David,VisualTools for Learning, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, Arlington, VA., 1996,
Cimino, JJ, Peter L. Elkin, and G. Octo Barnett, As We May Think: the Concept Space and Medical Hypertext. Computers and Biomedical Research 25: 238-63, 1992.
