VIRTUAL CLASSROOM FOR YOUNG PEOPLE WITH RISK BEHAVIOURS

Different forms of health risk behaviour among young people slowly reach a level of public health concern and urgently need new methods in education and prevention. Virtual Classroom at the Internet provides new possibilities to implement antismoking strategy. Previously we applied Virtual Classroom in nurse education in "MeditopEU” project. (http://www.meditopeu.com –International Virtual Classroom for Health Care Professionals) In the frame of the running transfer of innovation Leonardo da Vinci project entitled “e-Edumed“ (e-Learning Educational Centre in Medicine - http://www.e-edumed.ro/), an Internet based teaching material for nurses has been developed to enhance the knowledge on the smoking. It includes animation, video and multimedia elements as well as an exam panel.

Nurses will be trained to be familiar in tutorial in Virtual Classroom to provide interactive health promotion and prevention in smoking via Internet. Virtual Classroom is a real time collaborative educational tool to teach students in small groups synchronously on the Internet. Students are encouraged to interact with tutors and each others through web-conferencing technologies. Students collectively work on a task designed by the tutor of virtual classroom. Individual microphones, whiteboard tools, drawing rights for the group board, notes and poll are available.

“Straight Talking on Smoking” has been worked out; a problem based multimedia training with voice, videos and multimedia elements targets groups of young people. Trained nurses can coordinate discussion in Virtual Classroom. The method can utilise the opportunity of educational strategy allowed by Internet to increase motivation to participate in group discussion on smoking and improve attendance at antismoking forum.

There is a lot of scientific evidence on the effectiveness of computer aided cognitive behavioural therapy (cCBT) in treatment of mental, pulmonary and chronic diseases. An interactive computer interface is used for cCBT Virtual Classroom used in “MeditopEU” project and updated by the Partnership of “e-Edumed” project can be an innovative method in antismoking education.

Opportunity of Virtual Classroom attracts youngster to be involved in antismoking program.
In our presentation we introduce the Virtual Classroom and the training programmes used in “e-Edumed” project
Our work might be applied in elaborating suggestions aiming at improving the nowadays still highly wanting effectivity of available intervention programmes.