Strumenti di e-learning per la Facoltà di Medicina Gulu-Napoli
This project is part of a wide project of notable social and cultural importance, which starts with the recent activation of a Faculty of Medicine at the Gulu University in Uganda .
The Federico II University of Naples was appointed responsible of the quality of the training process of the new Ugandan doctors (Project GULUNAP) and it is thus necessary to establish operative links among the Italian teaching staff, the thirty young Ugandan teachers and the sixty students of the new Faculty.
The diffusion of the Internet nowadays has produced a change in the use of the various media, a novel definition of the role of teachers, as well as new organisational schemes in co-operations. Traditional face to face education has been supplemented by online lectures and wide diffusion of digital documents. Online teaching through the Internet, called e-learning , permits students to participate in lessons in a virtual classroom , to take part in the discussion, to ask for explanations, to interact with their teacher and the other students, and to receive a tutoring service.
The current opinion is that the future of University education lays in the combination of traditional educational methods and e-learning, so to get the best of both systems. In the process of set up of the Gulu Faculty of Medicine, e-learning is indeed a factor of acceleration, able to amplify resources and results.
This project, called SEGNA (acronyms of the Italian title “S trumenti di E -learning tra G ulu e Na poli), seeks to plan the e-learning tools necessary to reinforce the co-operation between Naples and Gulu.
The SEGNA project establishes a model of co-operation that can be exported to different contexts thanks to the peculiarity of e-learning to foster enhancement of competence without relevant investments in infrastructure.
Through the hardware and software platforms available at The Federico II University it will be possible to constantly follow the development of the Gulu Faculty of Medicine, until it acquires the ability to proceed autonomously.
The SEGNA project also encourages the growth of high professional skills in the Region of Campania in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Publishing fields. The role of Federico II University as supplier of e-learning services shall be founded on professional competencies ranging from the production of multimedia content to the new professional profiles of instructional designers or pro-active tutors engaged in the distance teaching.
The projects will thus be centred more on an effective and qualified competence in these emerging sectors than on the acquisition of infrastructures, being most of these already available.
This project also takes an important step forward in the process of digitalisation of the knowledge, especially in a field of utmost importance like the medical one. If knowledge is property of humankind, it must be available for everyone, with no distinction of nation or social class, then addressees of the SEGNA project will be all those willing to take part in the virtual community that will be created.
This experience will not only be a fundamental stage of a process of internationalisation of medical culture, but will also restate the crucial role of the Campania medical school.