Education, teleconferencing, and distance learning in respiratory care

Among health professions the field of respiratory care (RC) once enjoyed a leadership role in integrating new technologies in teaching, largely because of the excellent match between branching-logic clinical simulations and microcomputer technology. RC can reclaim leadership status by concentrating on effective teaching and the judicious (rather than lavish) deployment of educational technologies. Teleconferencing has been important in RC education, but its role is waning as Internet-based teaching becomes the dominant technology. RC instructors should avoid the media-comparison research pitfall. Research indicates that students who learn at a distance do not learn better or worse than students in traditional classrooms, although student attrition is a serious problem in Internet-based courses. Online courses are time consuming to develop and deploy, effectively serve limited numbers of students per course, and are not suitable for some topics and learners. RC is probably not a good match for courses and programs delivered entirely via the Internet, but RC is an excellent match for Internet-supported courses. Faculty should concentrate on teaching effectiveness, instruction design strategies, and making judicious, conservative used of educational technologies. With or without technology, instructors should develop learner-centered, authentic instruction. In RC education there are abundant opportunities to employ technology, but RC programs will be well served by distilling a detailed vision of effective educational-technology integration, rather than by continuing to pressure programs and faculty to adopt technology without careful consideration of the value added (or subtracted) by each specific technology.