How to Teach Medical Concepts Using Animations by Designing Multimedia Instructional Application

Multimedia has the promise of imparting medical education through novel teaching methods and encourages student interest. Medical educators must adapt to developing such computer and instructional technology to make such presentations a commonplace in the teaching setting. The scope of this paper is limited to the role of a physician in designing an educational multimedia instructional application using animations. It describes the requirements and stages of development of such a program with the goal of maximizing learning effectiveness. The animations entitled "How does blood clot?" are interactive and made in a computer program called "Flash" that focuses and simplifies the complicated concepts of blood coagulation. This animation is currently used as a part of the Problem Based Learning course in the Hematology/Neoplasia domain by second year medical students in the College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing MI. Student feedback/responses are described. The animations were also used to educate pediatric residents and senior medical students (3rd and 4th year) in reviewing the coagulation course. Insights gained from developing such projects are presented as a potential to use animation in computer assisted learning & teaching in medicine for the development of other projects in science learning environments.