Evaluation of a Network Based Learning Environment for Dermatology

Abstract

The importance of computer networks in a non technical environment is steadily increasing. Especially medicine is becoming a major user with its high demand in current information. We show here, how dermatology education can win by new network based applications. Because visual information is very important in dermatology, we have done in depth examinations for image quality considering compression, resolution, colour display, and transfer times. The basis layer for all our teaching resources is an image database, that is used to offer dynamic lecture scripts, case reports, an atlas and a quiz system. For evaluation purposes a generic user survey was used. The result of our evaluation and access statistics are very encouraging. I. Introduction Dermatology is a visually oriented discipline because diagnosis and differential diagnosis is mainly based on the recognition of the clinical and histopathological features. Therefore, images of diseases are extraordinary important in education ..