At the same time, students study computerized cases and images on their own. The curriculum changes the relationship between student and faculty, explains Anthony Frisbie, an assistant professor of biomedical communications and senior educational consultant at UT-Southwestern. The student already has information about the patient and context. Using the case-based approach, Kumar reports, the medical school reduced pathology lectures by 60 percent and developed 100 computerized cases to allow students to learn independently. The same professors and instructors who were spending several hours in preparation for lectures now spend more time as facilitators, interacting with the students in group discussions.
Most professors have neither the time nor the expertise to develop the case studies on the computer.
Rather, they serve as content experts for software-development specialists. The computer programs guide students through patient cases, through which they are challenged and taught to understand, diagnose, and treat. They suggest several alternatives for both diagnoses and treatments in an attempt to prompt students to resolve problems themselves. O'Donnell points out that for several subjects, large faculty seminars and lectures have been supplanted by group study of computerized cases. We want to get the students more active in their learning.