Solar: a case-oriented decision making program in radiography

Abstract

In many professional disciplines, the creation of meaningful learning contexts in order that students can form the essential links between the academic program and the practitioner’s experience, is a huge challenge for educators. In the 4-year degree course in Radiography & Medical Imaging at Monash University, this challenge has been met in part by building into the curriculum case-oriented learning activities. Originally paper-based, these have now been brought together in a computer program called SOLAR (Student Oriented Learning About Radiography) designed to be used by on-campus as well as remote, distance education, students. SOLAR was introduced at the second year level in 1999 and its early development was described at CBLIS’99. This paper tracks the further development of the SOLAR project and reports on the students’ acceptance of this mode of learning.