Today , the majority of new courses at all educational levels are being pressed on CD-ROM s . CD-ROMs have several advantages over analog video. Many corporations are turning to new interactive media. This seems to be a high cost, but in a continuing education context, if we take into consideration classroom space, travel, teachers' salaries, accommodation etc., multimedia proves cheaper over the long run. Besides, the students or practicing health professionals can study at their own pace, not the teacher's, they can interact with the courseware and take the course where and when they want it.
Students seem to remember more when they are actively involved in the learning process.
It appears that a combination of text, sound, still and animated images makes a strong impression. If nothing else, people seem to enjoy multimedia presentations and pay more attention to the subject. We noticed this fact with our graduate class, on whom multimedia teaching has been used for the last two years. The students also seem to retain the information for a longer period of time because they are not passive in the learning process, as they are in the traditional classroom, but rather active and contributing to the process. Up to now everybody in the field of education believed that we had to teach before starting, for example, a clinical procedure.