An Online Course Design For English Medical Terminology Learning

The importance of medical terminology for health professionals is indisputable, but when it comes to the learning of English medical terminology, it is quite often regarded as a boring, time-consuming and seemingly rewardless effort. Even in a medical university, how to efficiently and effectively teach or learn English medical terminology has long been considered as a challenge.In most medical universities of China, English medical terminology courses are offered in a classroom-confined face-to-face format using paper textbooks as the main teaching/learning medium and in rare cases with audio tapes to help, let alone multimedia assistance. This mostly passive learning in a teacher-centered class and the tremendous difficulty in remembering so many English medical terminologies, more often than not, discourage the students from actively learning the English medical terminologies.The fast development of internet and multimedia technology, along with the significant advance in online learning strategies, is changing this unfavorable situation. Online courses have more and more displayed their effective and efficient functions in the field of education and have been widely offered in many disciplines.Various learning theories have been advocated in the design and delivery of online courses, among which constructivist models of learning are the...