Health professionals must constantly keep up with the latest scientific and medical research to stay current in their practice; they have very little time to look for viable information resources continually, and they often have to work in remote, isolated geographical areas where academic institutions and knowledge organizations aren’t easily accessible. The VPAC Telelearning helped healthcare professionals and students access the resources they needed online.

VPAC Telelearning History

In May 2001, the Vice-Presidents Advisory Council (VPAC) created the Telelearning Subcommittee (TS), which includes representatives from five British Columbian universities: UNBC, UVIC, UBC, SFU, and RRU. The TS aims to explore online learning methods and technologies for health professionals seeking relevant workshops and courses. Two of the committee members on our team were Dr. Patrick Mann from UNBC and Dr. Francis Lau from UVIC. Kathleen Sun handled Project Management and System Analysis.

Development of VPAC Telelearning

rmd Studio’s role was to develop a prototypical online Learning Management System (LMS) that could be accessed by healthcare professionals online and maintained by administrators from each participating university. Using this web application, administrators can enter academic courses from different universities and then combine the existing courses to create programs, workshops, and seminars.

This way, healthcare professionals could access the required information using a centralized web database and contact the associated universities to make further arrangements.

We built and tested the prototype within four months during the summer of 2003. We implemented the VPAC Tele-learning in PHP and used an Oracle SQL database. The application followed a three-tiered Model View Controller (MVC) architecture, using Data Manager, VDRO, and Page Maker classes. Other features of this application were as follows:

1. IMS standard-compliant Learning Management features for constructing courses, seminars, workshops, and programs.
2. User Profile Management
3. Access Control List (ACL) for learners, data providers, administrators, and Super Administrators.
4. Built-in Search Engine

University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) hosted the VPAC Telelearning application. We want to thank the following wonderful people who participated in this enjoyable project during the four months of our collaboration:

Dr. Patrick Mann – Director of Computer and Telecommunication Services

Dr. Francis Lau – Associate Professor and graduate advisor at UVIC

Kathleen Sun – Project Manager, System Analyst, Usability Testing

Monika – Data Entry and Usability Testing