The program was developed using the Authorware shell, which is very powerful in that it can use multimedia and many different evaluation formats. The multiple question formats give flexibility to ask questions according to the type of knowledge being assessed, whether identifying structures or pathologies, or deciding on the next appropriate area of study. An automatic scoring function is being developed that will tabulate results. I take x-rays from teaching files and digitize them by using the Kodak Photo CD process. The digitized images can then be imported into Authorware.
Some images can take up as much as one megabyte of space.
The advantage of scanning the film into a Photo CD is the very good quality of the images. They can be enlarged many times without the graininess often seen in digitized images. We like to select the most interesting and illustrative images from the case library that we have available. One series shows a hand fracture and an accompanying facial fracture. We hope to implement the computer-based exam at the end of the next elective period.