Vicarious learning and (virtual) case-based teaching in health science education.

This paper describes PATSy, an established interactive case-based system that provides students with access to virtual patients. PATSy has recently been extended by the addition of vicarious learning (VL) support to users of one of its subject areas (speech and language therapy). Vicarious learning is the idea that people can and will learn through being given access to the learning experiences of others. The PATSy extension (VL-PATSy) is also described - it consists of a database of VL resources together with a rule-based delivery system. Each VL resource is a short video clip of two students (or a student and tutor) engaged in discussions about various aspects of diagnosing a patients language disorder. PATSy and VL-PATSy represent an adaptive system for combining case-based teaching and learning with vicarious learning. The paper concludes with a description of an evaluation of VLs effectiveness that is currently underway.