Abstract:

Smoking during childhood and adolescence produces significant health problems among young people. Teenagers need anti-smoking campaigns tailored to their needs. The aim should be not to tell young people what to do, instead to let them make their own decisions. Adolescents need to take an active part of the learning process to feel involved and comfortable. The Internet holds tremendous potential for youth. Internet-based videoconference system secures a great option to improve effectiveness of antismoking intervention.

In the frame of the EU Leonardo da Vinci program, the running international project entitled “e-Learning Educational Centre in Medicine” (www.e-edumed.ro) we have implemented health education at the Internet for small groups of 14-19 years old young peoples in smoking prevention and cessation. During the real-time videoconference trained school nurses managed discussion on problem based cases related smoking. We developed videos on tobacco use. All participants could look at the same videos and slides at their screen presented by the nurse tutor. Participants communicated by voice, instant messaging, poll and chat while seeing each other via their Webcam. We applied Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ Pro Meeting software with possibilities for interactive learning. The technique could also record the videoconferences.
Evaluation of the sessions have been carried out by questionnaires and a fine grained analysis of the recorded sessions related to the e-learning and the content of the antismoking intervention as well as the pedagogical aspect of the Internet-based synchronous video-meeting.

Our Internet-based real time videoconference system can provide high levels of interaction and ensure optimal methods for health education of young people.

Keywords:

Real time videoconference, Internet, smoking intervention, young people.