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Computer-Based Iternatives in HigherEducation - Past, Present and FutureDavid DewhurstLearning Techgology Section, College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh, UK

SummaryMany thousands of animals are still used annually in tertiaryeducation despite efforts by enthusiastic teachers to reduce thisnumber by developing and making available to their colleaguesa range of alternatives. Technology-based alternatives whichsupport replacement and reduction are at the forefront of theseefforts. Persunding teachers to use them is critical and strate-gies to raise awareness and support the integration ofthe alter-natives into teaching are described. Many of the existing com-puter-based alternatives were developed in the early 1990s andrapid changes in the technologies used to deliver them haverendered them difficult to use and in some cases obselete de-spite the fact that their content and educational design are stillvalid. A project, using a learning object approach to develop-ment, which aims to preserve the content and educational de-sign, improve the fiexibilty of delivery and enable teachers toedit the content, is also described.

Zusammenfassung: Computer-basierte Alternativen In derHochschulbildung - bisher, jetzt und in ZukunftViele tausend Tiere werden immer noch jährlich in derHochschulbildung verbraucht, obwohl enthusiastische Lehrerdiesem entgegenzuwirken versuchen, indem sie eine Reihe vonAlternativmethoden entwickeln und entwickelt haben und dieseihren Kollegen zur verfügung stellen. Technologie-basierteAlternativen, die den Ersatz und die Reduktion von Tierver-suchen fördern, sind an vorderster Front dieser Bemühungen.Es ist heikel, die Lehrenden von diesen Methoden zu über-zeugen, damit sie auch eingesetzt werden. In diesem Artikel sindStrategien beschrieben, durch die der Bekanntheitsgrad vonAlternativen und die Integration von Alternativen in die Lehreverbessert werden können. Viele der erhältlichen Computer-basierten Alternativen wurden in den frühen I990ern ent-wickelt, und die schnellen technologischen Entwicklungen inden Transfertechnologien haben ihreAnwendung erschwert undin manchen Fällen unmöglich gemacht, trotzdem ihre Inhalteund ihre pädagogische Ausgestaltung noch aktuell sind.Hier wird ein Projekt beschrieben, in dem durch einen Lern-objekt-Ansatz; der Inhalte und pädagogische Ausgestaltungenthält, eine bessere Flexibilität bezüglich des Transfersgewährleistet wird und den Lehrenden erlaubt, die Inhalteanzupassen.

Keywords: Computer-based alternatives, replacement of animal use in teaching, pharmacology teaching, biomedical education

1 Introduction

In the UK, in common with most coun-tries in the world, animals are used inteaching, mainly in tertiary institutionsand in biomedical disciplines suchas pharmacology and physiology. AI-though, where official figures are avail-able, the number of animals used for ed-ucational purposes is small i.e. less then1% of the total used for research (Casatiand Hartung, 2003). This still means thateducation accounts for the use of manythousands of animals each year much ofwhich, it could be argued, is unnecessary.

The reported figures are also often mis-leading since, in many countries incJud-ing the UK, animals which are killed justprior to use would not be counted in theofficial statistics. Thus, isolated tissuepreparations removed from freshlykilled, which form the mainstay of phar-macology practical teaching, would notbe reported.Many alternative approaches to using

animals in teaching have been developed(see Gruber and Dewhurst, 2004 for asummary) and undoubtedly these havebeen successful in replacing or reducingthe number of animals used in teaching

Received 18 August 2006; received in final form and accepted for publication 4 September 2006

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though the evidence for the scale of theimpact these have had is tenuous. Of therange of different alternatives which havebeen developed probably the most im-portant have been those which make useof new technologies and it is these whichwill be discussed here.

2 Computer-based alternativesto using animals in teaching

The use of computer-based alternativesto using animals in the teaching of disci-plines such as pharmacology and physi-ology dates back to the early 1980's.Then there were two main approaches to

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development. Some programs were de-signed to simulate an anima Ipreparation,such as an isolated piece of intestinefrom a guinea pig, or a perfused heartfrom a rabbit, and used a mathematicalalgorithm which predicted, based onknown d~a, how the tissue would re-spond to drugs or drug combinations, andfactors such as electrical stimuli. Thistype of program encouraged learning byexploration - students would have to se-lect drugs/drug combinations, select dos-es and routes of administration and, in ef-fect, design the experiments they wishedto conduct - and was best suited to alearning environment in which a tutorwas present to guide the students. Anoth-er approach was to create a tutorial pro-gram around data sets derived from realexperiments which had been designed bya knowledgeable tutor well acquaintedwith how a particular animal preparationcould be used to teach major principlesand factual knowledge. This second ap-proach resulted in programs which couldbe used independent of tutor supportthough often learning would be enhancedby the presence of a tutor freed fromtrouble-shooting technical problems withequipment. Each approach fosters differ-ent learning outcomes and both havebeen demonstrated to be extremely suc-cessful in different learning or teachingsituations. It is important to recognisethat these programs were developed byenthusiastic teachers interested in usingtechnology to enhance the learning expe-rience for their students. Often in achiev-ing this they also replaced animal exper-iments but this was not the main goal - afact which has often made it easier topersuade other teachers to adopt them asthey are more likely to be convinced byevidence of educational effectivenessthan they are by calls to replace animalexperiments on ethical grounds. Exam-ples of a large number of computer-basedalternatives may be found on the Euro-pean Centre for Alternatives to animalsin higher education (EURCA) website(www.eurca.org).

3 Educational effectiveness

A number of studies have been conduct-ed to investigate how effective these new

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approaches are in achieving learning out-comes compared to the more traditionallaboratory practical class approachwhich used animals (Clarke, 1987; De-whurst et al., 1988; Fawver et al., 1990;Guy and Frisby, 1992; Kinzie et al.,1993; Dewhurst et al., 1994; Leathardand Dewhurst, 1995; Hughes, 2001). Inthe majority of cases these studiesdemonstrate that the computer-based al-ternatives are able to achieve many of thelearning objectives of practical classeswhich traditionally use animals with theexception of teaching and practicing bothgeneric and specific laboratory skills(e.g. making up solutions; animal han-dling; administration of anaesthetics,drugs; surgical procedures such as re-moval/isolation of a tissue or blood ves-sei cannulation; using specific pieces ofrecording equipment; monitoring physio-logical signs; humane killing). Clearly, ifthese skills are considered by the teacherto be vitally important, then a computer-based alternative may not fulfill thelearning objectives. Equally if theseskills are not that important, and in manycases such as medical, pharmacy, andhealthcare professional education, theyare not, then a computer-based alterna-tive may be more effective in addressingsome of the other learning objectives ofpractical classes (e.g. providing accuratedate to enable practice of data handlingand presentation skills, communicationskills, team working, knowledge acquisi-tion). Computer-based learning resourcesalso have the advantage that they promoteinteractive, resource-based learning andthe development of IT skills. It is probablethat only a rninority of students will re-quire training in those skills which can on-ly be acquired from a laboratory class us-ing animals. From an institutionalperspective this may mean that coursescould focus increasingly scarce resourceson providing traditional practical classesonly for those students whose future ca-reers may demand those skills (e.g. phar-maceutical or academic research). Thishas started to happen in some courseswhere practical elements of a course havebeen focused into optional/elective mod-ules. Even for those students for whom itis deemed necessary to perform practicalclasses computer-based alternatives maypromote areduction in animal use by bet-

ter preparing students for the real class(e.g. they can test out study designs, get afeel for the correct doses of drugs and oth-er experimental variables) or enabling astudent, whose experiment has failed (notuncommon), to collect the data they willneed to meet assessment criteria withoutkilling more animals.

4 Role of the teacher

The importance of the teacher in adopt-ing alternatives cannot be overstressed. Itis they who decide - perhaps constrainedby factors such as lack of funding, toolarge class sizes or policies made by theirline managers or a professional body -how their discipline, whether it be phar-macology or physiology, will be taught.It is they who must be persuaded to adoptan alternatives approach to a laboratoryclass and it is important to provide asmuch support to them as possible. Thefirst step is to make them aware of the ex-istence of alternative approaches whichcan be achieved through the normalacademic dissemination vehicles (con-ference presentations, journal articles)or via Internet databases several of whichalready exist (NORINA (http//:oslovets.veths.no/norina/)(Smith and Smith,1997); AVAR (www.envirolink.org/arrs/avar/alted_db.htm); InterNICHE (www.interniche.orgj). Smith and Allen (2005)have produced a comprehensive reviewof databases to support the use of alter-natives.A workshop, sponsored by ECVAM in

1998 attended by fifteen experts fromeight countries involved in developing,using and evaluating animal free modelsfor educational purposes recommendedthat: "Databases should contain morecomprehensive information, for example,contact details, availability, advice onuse, target audience and an independentevaluation of the material" (van der Valket al., 1999). The EURCA (www.eur-ca.org) project was established to meetthese needs and the database provides in-formation rich data on a relatively smallnumber of high quality alternatives in-cluding independent reviews, evidence ofeducational effectiveness, informationfrom teachers who have used a particularresource, and support materials (van der

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Valk et al., 2001). More recently, an in-formal survey of 32 pharmacology teach-ers from 12 countries (Dewhurst andHughes, unpublished observations,2006) revealed that they are most likelyto be convinced that an alternative maybe useful (in order of importance) by: ev-idence of educ~tional effectiveness; pos-itive independent reviews; cost, recom-mendations from colleagues; andobjections to animal use by students.

5 Integrating computer-basedalternatives into mainstreamteaching and learning

To be effective and therefore have an im-pact on animal use, computer-based al-ternatives must be integrated into teach-ing and become part of the assessmentprocess (Dewhurst and Hughes, 1999).Simply making these resources informal-ly available to students over a universitynetwork does not work (Markham et al.,1998) as most students have adoptedvery strategic approaches to learning andtheir focus is on elements of their coursewhich are assessed and contribute totheir final award. As a consequence theywill ignore recommendations fromteachers to use additional resources un-less they are clearly an integral, assessedcomponent of their course.The process of integration can be time-

consuming and many teachers lack thetime and sometimes the skills to do thiswithout some assistance. There are waysin which they can be supported and one,which has proved to be successful, is toprovide support materials for students touse alongside the computer programs(Hollingsworth et al., 1999,2001; Norrisand Dewhurst, 2002). These support ma-terials may take the form of study guidesor workbooks and may include tasks andactivities directly related to the computerprogram and self-assessment questions.If teachers can be encouraged to developthese themselves then, through that pro-cess, they acquire some ownership of theteaching materials and this in turn willcontribute to their successful integration.This strategy also partly overcomes theresistance of teachers to using third-par-ty resources - the so-called "not-invent-ed-here syndrome",

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6 Limitations of currentcomputer-based alternatives

As stated earlier most of the alternativescurrently available were developed overa decade ago (pre-Internet) by enthusias-tic teachers to enhance their own teach-ing. Making them available to otherteachers was not a major consideration.They thus present a personal view of howa particular animal preparation may beused to teach a particular aspect of phar-macology or physiology. Typically theteacher decides on which experiments toinclude, which drugs and experimentalparameters, how much background infor-mation to provide, which self-assess-ments to include etc. Naturally the com-puter program they develop to replace aparticular laboratory practical will bebroadly based on how they used to runthe practical class. Undoubtedly their ap-proach will not be the same as that ofother teachers and consequently the com-pute program will not meet all of theneeds of all teachers. In many cases theseteachers will reject using an existing al-ternative simply because it does not meettheir needs completely and continue touse the laboratory practical which theyare familiar with.Most of the computer programs were

initially developed using specific pro-gramming languages (e.g. Basic, C,C++) or commercially-available author-ing tools (e.g. Authorware", Director?(Macromedia), and Toolbook'' (Asyme-trix). In some cases the content expert(teacher) was also the programmer, inothers a content expert would work witha courseware developer proficient in theuse of authoring programs.The end result of the development pro-

cess was a compiled executable (.exe)program in which all of the learning andmedia assets (text, images, graphics, ani-mations, video, audio, self-assessmentquestions), the sequencing and learningdesign were intrinsically linked to the de-livery platform or runtime engine. Theywere usually delivered on floppy disk orCD-ROM such that they could be madeavailable to students over university localarea networks (intranets or LANs). Theprograms were not editable, unless theuser had access to the source code andthe programming knowledge needed to

modify the code, and they could not bedelivered over the Internet. In additiontechnological changes to the deliveryplatforms underpinning the delivery ofthe programs (such as the move fromDOS to Windows, from 16 bit to 32 bitprocessing and from VGA to XGAscreen resolutions) made it increasinglydifficult to use the programs, the only so-lution being to rewrite them for the newdelivery platform, an expensive andtime-consuming business. Since the edu-cational content is intrinsically linked tothe technologies used to develop and de-liver the programs, as the latter becomeobsolete then the content and pedagogi-cal design is also lost.A key factor in successful integration

of computer-based alternatives intoteaching is ownership - teachers aremuch more likely to use resources theyhave developed themselves rather thanthird party resources. As mentioned ear-lier this may be achieved by a teacherdeveloping "wrap-around" support re-sources to accompany a third-party com-puter program but in many ways it wouldbe much better if teachers were able tomodify the content or pedagogical ap-proach of the program themselves.A project (RECAL www.recal.mvm.

ed.ac.uk/) which aims to preserve the ed-ucational value of these programs in theface of rapidly changing delivery tech-nologies, and propose a new approach todeveloping programs of this type in thefuture, is underway in Edinburgh.

7 A new approach to thedevelopment and delivery ofcomputer-based alternatives?

The RECAL project has two main goals:preserving the educational content anddesign of existing computer-based alter-natives enabling them to be used withnew technological delivery platforms;and providing a different, learning objectapproach to creating new programswhich will prevent problems of obsoles-cence in the face of rapidly changingtechnologies. The computer-based alter-natives on which the project is focusingis aseries of programs developed bythe author and now marketed throughSheffield BioScience Programs (www.

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sheffbp.co.uk). The approach is to enablemore effective management of the com-ponent learning and information assets(text, images, animations, self-assess-ments, video and audio), provide teach-ers with easy-to-use authoring templatesto enable them to build their own re-sources trom these assets, and build fu-ture-proofed delivery engines compatiblewith delivery over the Internet, CDROMor even via PDAs (Personal Digital As-sistants)/Smartphones.

The process combines new web-basedmultimedia technologies such as Macro-media Flash" to develop the content withthe use of XML and is based on commonlearning technology standards and speci-fications. The system architecture is builtaround a number of separate compo-nents: the run-time engine (currentlyFlash®); the text (XHTMLhtml files) andmedia assets (images (.jpg), animations(.swf), video (Flash" Video .ftv), audio(Flash® audio .fta) which are stored on aweb-server; and the XML parameter filesdescribing the educational sequencing,each of which can be modified indepen-dently of the others. When the user startsthe pro gram these components are as-sembled and presented dynamically: theruntime engine (currently the project isusing Flash") looks for the XML param-eter file and, finding it, loads the instruc-tions and content specified in the XML.Some of these specifications are URLpointers to external resources such as im-ages, animations, data traces, text andquestions which are dynamically loadedin to the runtime program as weil. Anyone of the components is able to bechanged independently of any of the oth-ers - images or text may be added oredited, sections of the pro gram can beextended, the program could be transIat-ed into any number of different lan-guages or a different run time enginecould be used. In these situationschanges to the XML file would point at adifferent set of text and media assets asdefined by the teacher to meet localneeds. The capacity to edit existing pro-grams will greatly increase their ftexibil-ity: teachers will be able to easily modi-fy the pro gram e.g. reorganise thesequence; add/remove sections, images,text, or questions; change experimentalvariables such as drug dose, drug names

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or electrical stimulation parameters; andinsert different language vers ions of theprogram's text. While Flash" is beingused as the runtime engine of choicenow, the emergence of a new runtime en-

, gine technology in a few years would notcreate problems as the XML sequenceand the media assets are managed sepa-rately and these would simply be linkedto the new runtime engine. The projecthas been described in more detail (Ell-away et al., 2004; Dewhurst et al., 2005).

Summary

1.Numerous high-quality computer-based alternatives to using animals inteaching biomedical sciences such aspharmacology and physiology areavailable at low cost.

2. Many were developed by enthusiasticteachers in the 1990s and, although thecontent and educational design is stillvalid, rapid advances in delivery tech-nologies have rendered them increas-ingly difficult to use and sometimesobsolete with expensive and time-con-suming rewrites often being the onlysolution.

3. Teachers are critical to the adoption ofalternatives into mainstream te achingand learning. They need supportthrough awareness raising, provisionof teacher-centric information aboutalternatives and practical help in inte-grating alternatives into their courses.

4. New methods for preserving the con-tent and educational design of agingcomputer-based alternatives are underinvestigation and undergoing proof-of-concept trials. These have the poten-tial, not only to extend the useful lifeof these programs but to also improveftexibility of delivery, provide localediting functionality, and offer a differ-ent approach to future developmentand delivery of computer-based re-sources.

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AcknowledgementsFinancial support for much of this workand most recently the RECAL projecthas been kindly provided by The LordDowding Fund (NAVS), UK. Thanks al-so to Dr Rachel Ellaway and Mr StewartCromar at the University of Edinburghfor their work on the RECAL project.

Correspondence toProfessor David DewhurstAssistant Principal (e-learning &e-health)Director of Learning TechnologyCollege of Medicine & VeterinaryMedicineUniversity of Edinburgh15 George SquareEdinburgh EH8 9XD, UKe-mail: david.dewhurst@ed.ac.uk