Optometric Education

ASCOTECH

Volume 25, Number 4

Optometric Educators' Reference Links on the WWW

Jay M. Rumsey, O.D., F.A.A.O.

Introduction

Educators have found that different students learn best when the information is presented in varying formats.(1) This difference in learning style applies not only to the auditory and visual lecture format of the large class, but also to the audio-visual aids used in books, tapes, slides and video tape. The student at any age appears to accept and retain the salient educational points when provided in several formats. This is especially true when different slants upon the information display method are given to maintain student interest.

The profession of optometry has used many presentation formats over the years. Numerous texts ^(2-5) have been made available for the student and practitioner from publishers such as Butterworth, Lippincott, Mosby, Appleton & Lange and others. Some of the publishers, universities and commercial companies have developed 35mm slide albums ⁽⁶⁾, computer CD-Rom ^(7-8) or laser disc ⁽⁹⁾ applications for education in the areas of disease, vision fields and contact lens. Many state and national organizations [AAO, AOA, ARVO]⁽¹⁰⁾ offer audio and/or video tapes of their meetings or programs for continuing education.

Adapting New Technology for Learning

An exciting new technology has mushroomed over the last six to eight years that may stimulate the student to lifelong learning. This technology is the Internet (World Wide Web [WWW]) and is tied to the increasing prevalence, and lower costs, of personal computers in the home, school and office.

However, one of the problems of the WWW is locating usable data in the vast amount of available information. The sheer size of the network and apparent disorganization of the server sites in the U.S. and foreign countries does not help an educator during the preparation phase of program development. While many network search engines [Yahoo.com, Excite.com, Snap.com, Infoseek.com, and Lycos.com to name only a few (11)] are helpful to begin the task of isolating the desired topics, they are somewhat limited in that the sites' keywords must be published in order for the search to be successful. Many useful sites go unnoticed by the educator because the page author does not submit a list of his/her pages to these search engines. Only the students of his/her particular course have access to this information.

Not all published sites on the WWW are appropriate for educational purposes. They may be useful for the commercial business to educate the professional or public at large about the services they provide, but they do not adequately give background information for the student. These sites however do provide a service to education in that they often have quality images of their services or products from which the educator can further instruct the student. The educator can use these sites to improve the understanding of important concepts and display the specific instrumentation for the student.

Implementation

In an effort to help the optometric educator, and to some extent the practicing optometrist, a WWW page list of optometry topics and ocular (external and internal) images has been developed. The web pages listed are not exhaustive. Many of the sites have been found by perusing the electronic libraries of many medical and optometry universities and colleges. Often the links found in a particular page published by faculty have provided additional references.

The web page references have been arbitrarily placed into four different categories. These are: 1) Universities, 2) Organizations, 3) Images Libraries and 4) Other Sources. References within the Universities (Table 1) links are web pages designed by faculty for student education within their particular courses. National or State references associated with public or professional education are found within the Organizations (Table 2) page references. Image Libraries (Table 3) are sites designed with significant graphic or photographic educational displays. Other Sources (Table 4) include commercial information sites and on-line journal and magazine reports.

The actual WWW reference site for the above information can be found at http://www.nova.edu/hpd/otm/References.html The actual site references are embedded in the links associated with the tables. An effort has been made to minimize overlap of the references. The Image libraries most often contain links found within some of the other categories. A link within the reference site lists a number of educators who provide their students with information taught or augmented using pages displayed on the WWW. This list is shown in Table 5.

The reference sites listed in the tables are not comprehensive. Due to the dynamics of the WWW, they probably can never be complete as new sites are developed daily. The site will be updated periodically by the author and information will be passed along as new sites are developed. Similarly, sites may be removed or altered, and notification of this change in display or structure should also be listed for users of the reference page.

The referenced sites are limited to English language display only. A need exists for a similar site of references, as least as it pertains to the graphics and photographic displays, for students of other languages. The very nature of the international WWW lends itself favorably for this sort of project.

If you are an educator or if you use these sites either for a course or for patient education in your practice, you should notify and ask permission from the authors of each site you reference. Not only is this a courtesy for the authors of the sites referenced, which gives them feedback about the usefulness of their endeavors, it will avoid copyright infringements.

Conclusions

The Internet is fast becoming a major teaching and learning resource for the initial education of the optometry student and the continuing education of the practicing optometrist. This paper attempts to provide a common source for presentation of optometric information by the educators of our profession.

References

Contact with Your Ideas:
Dr. William M. Dell Bdell@pco.edu
Or, Dr. Dominick Maino Dmaino@eyecare.ico.edu