S UM MARY The intr oduc tion of new lear nin g technolo gies, the exponential growth of Inter net usage and the advent of the World Wide W eb have th e potential of changing the face of higher e duca- tion.There are also demands in medical education for greater glob- alizat ion, for the d evelo pmen t of a common core curriculum, for improving access to training, for mo re exible and student-centred training programmes including programmes with multi-professional elements and for maintaining quality while increasing student num- bers and working within nancial constraints.An international vir- tual medical school (IVIMEDS) with a high-quality education programme embodying a hybrid model of a blended curriculum of innovative e-learning approaches and the best of traditional face- to-face teaching is one response to these challenges. Fifty leading international medical schools and institutions are participating in a feasib ility stud y. This is explorin g: inno vative thinkin g and approaches to the new learning technologies including e-learning and virtual real ity; new approa ches to curriculum planni ng and mapping and advanced instructional design based on the use of ‘reusable learning objects’; an international perspective on medical education which takes into account the trend to globalization; a exible curriculum which meets the needs of different students and has the potential of increasing access to medicine. The need for change “In thinking a bout the future of medical educ ation , we can adopt two diff erent approa ches”, sugges ted Harden (2000 a , p. 435). “We can look at the changes taki ng place in medica l education as a journey where the future is a continuing evo- lution of what has happened in the past three decades or so––an evolutionary a pproach. Alternatively we may vis ualize a more dramatic journey to a different world where there are funda mental changes in medica l education , some of which we may have difculty envisaging at this point at the begin- ning of the twenty-rst century––a revolutionary approach.” The last three decades of the twentieth century have seen remarkable changes in the curr icula of medical schools world- wide. There hav e been mov es to more integrated and multi- disciplinary curricula (Harden et al ., 1984; GMC, 1993; Ha rden, 2000b) , to problem and task-bas ed l earn ing (Bar rows & T amblyn, 1980 ; Da vis & Harden, 1999; Har den et al ., 1996a, 1996b) , to s tuden t-centred learn ing ( Har den, 2000c; Har den, 2001) , to the develop ment of core curricula with spe cial study modules ( Harden & Da vis, 1995), to com- munity-based education (Whitehouse et al ., 1997) , to mul ti- professional education (Harden 1998) and to the concept of outcome-based education (Harden et al ., 1999a , 1999b). Such changes in educational stra tegies, howev er signicant, may not be enough if medical schools are to respond to the demands facing medical education as a result of changes in systems of healthcare delivery, signica nt advances in medi- cine, increasi ng publi c expectatio ns of th e doctor, increasi ng demands on teachers and increasing student numbers at a time of nancial constraints. There may be a need for a more revolutionar y approach and for a more fundamental look at the concept of the medical school as we know it today, where the emphasis is on a physi- cal medical school in which students spend a signicant part of their time attending lectures and other classes (Harden, 2000a). Such a change could harness the u nprecedente d advances that have taken place in information technology. “Web and internet technologies are transforming our world”, argued Horton (2001, p . 1,3),“presenting opportu niti es we could only imagine a fe w years ag o. Nowhere are these opportuniti es great er than in training and educat ion. .. E-technologies do not change how human beings learn.What technology does is to remove constraints on the kinds of learn- ing experiences we can economically and practically create.” Ronald Phip ps and Jamie Meriso tis, of the USA Institute for Higher Education Policy, noted in their 1999 report (p. 29) on distance education th at “T echnology is hav ing, and will continue to ha ve, a profound impa ct on colleges an d uni- versities in America and around the globe. Distance learning , which was once a poor and often unwelcome stepchild within the academic community is becoming increasingly more visib le as a part of the high er education family . ” Oblinger (2001) has predicted a major growth in e-learning and the emergence of global consortia leading to the creation of one or more glob al virtual unive rsities . E-learning wil l grow in popularity, she argu es, because o f its con venience and exi - bility and because of the increasing availability of computers and st udents’ famil iarity with them. “It is now i nevitab le”, suggest ed Russell & Russell (1999 , p. 8) “tha t future coho rts of students will be educated in a context where a consider- able time is spent on-line”. King (2001) has considered the changes now sweeping universities and affecting both campus as well as off-campus provision. He identied some of the causes of these changes–– gl obal izatio n, mas sica tion , government inte rventi on and technological change––and pointed to some of the manager- ial issues that they pose f or universities. He argued that change is inevitable and that university management must take the lead in successfully steering institutions through their chang- ing environments. Austra lian- funded research on borderless education led to two research reports (Cunningham et al ., 1998 ; Cunni ngham et al ., 2000) . The rst explo red the mooted possibility that bricks-and-mortar institutions would be replaced by global networks.The second looked at lessons to be learned from exemp lary privat e, corpora te and virtual- providers in the burgeoning post-secondary education and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 50111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 60111 Correspondence : Profe ssor R.M. Harden, Centre for Med ica l Educa tion, University of Dundee , T ay Park House, 484 Pe rth Road, Dundee DD2 1LR, UK. T el:+44 (0)1382 6319 72; fax: +44 (0)1382 645748; ema il: r.m.harde n@ dundee.ac.uk An international virtual medical school (IVIMEDS): the future for medical education? R.M. HARDEN 1 & I.R. HART 2 1 Centre for Medical Education, University of Dundee, UK; 2 Ottawa, Canada Med ical T eache r ,V ol. 24, No . 3, 2002, pp . 261– 267 ISSN 0142–159X (print)/ISSN 1466–187X online/02/010261– 07 © 2002 T aylor & Francis Ltd M e d T e a c h D o w n l o a d e d f r o m i n f o r m a h e a l t h c a r e . c o m b y M a r c C r a y o n 1 2 / 2 0 / 1 0 F o r p e r s o n a l u s e o n l y .
