Project

Project Description

 

Basis and goal
 

The Swiss Tropical Institute (STI) undertakes research, teaching/training and provides services in the fields of tropical medicine, travel medicine and international health. STI is an associated institute of the University of Basel. Many members of the STI staff hold teaching posts (professors, senior lecturers) at the University of Basel in the faculties of Sciences, Medicine, and Arts (Ethnology).

STI has a well-documented tradition of introducing, applying and evaluating new didactic and educational concepts in its courses and  - owing to its mandate and activities – has spearheaded interdisciplinary approaches in medicine and science.  For example, STI and the University of Basel offer an interfaculty program in epidemiology up to the Ph.D. level. This is unique for Switzerland and hardly found in continental Europe. STI is also associated with the transdisciplinary program „Mensch-Gesellschaft-Umwelt (Mankind - Society – Environment)“ of the University of Basel. Finally, the STI offers a 7-weeks module within the new curriculum in biology in the field of infection biology/parasitology and epidemiology.  Besides pursuing an interdisciplinary approach, the courses of STI in the fields of biology of infection, parasitology and tropical medicine aim at providing information and experience from the molecular to the population level.

Given the (1) sound level of expertise and experience, (2) strong link to modules in the undergraduate and graduate level at the faculties of medicine and science and (3) the nature and position of the disciplines of parasitology, tropical medicine, epidemiology and public health, it is the goal of this proposal to develop an innovative approach of WEB-based training/learning and virtual, interactive learning (distant learning) complementing traditional approaches.

The main purpose of this project is the development of a system of software-tools for the implementation of learning modules for international health issues, particularly and initially in the fields of  (1) tropical medicine, (2) diagnostics in parasitology, (3) epidemiology, (4) public and international health.