Eisner J
Department of Dental Health Services and Informatics, School of Dental Medicine, University at Buffalo, NY 14214, USA.
Medinfo. 1995;8 Pt 2:1706.
A consortium of dental schools and allied dental programs was established in 1991 with the expressed purpose of creating a curriculum database program that was end-user modifiable [1]. In April of 1994, a beta version (Beta 2.5 written in FoxPro(TM) 2.5) of the software CATs, an acronym for Curriculum Analysis Tools, was released for use by over 30 of the consortium's 60 member institutions, while the remainder either waited for the Macintosh (TM) or Windows (TM) versions of the program or were simply not ready to begin an institutional curriculum analysis project. Shortly after this release, the design specifications were rewritten based on a thorough critique of the Beta 2.5 design and coding structures and user feedback. The result was Beta 3.0 which has been designed to accommodate any health professions curriculum, in any country that uses English or French as one of its languages. Given the program's extensive use of screen generation tools, it was quite easy to offer screen displays in a second language. As more languages become available as part of the Unified Medical Language System, used to document curriculum content, the program's design will allow their incorporation. When the software arrives at a new institution, the choice of language and health profession will have been preselected, leaving the Curriculum Database Manager to identify the country where the member institution is located. With these 'macro' end-user decisions completed, the database manager can turn to a more specific set of end-user questions including: 1) will the curriculum view selected for analysis be created by the course directors (provider entry of structured course outlines) or by the students (consumer entry of class session summaries)?; 2) which elements within the provided course outline or class session modules will be used?; 3) which, if any, internal curriculum validation measures will be included?; and 4) which, if any, external validation measures will be included. External measures can include accreditation standards, entry-level practitioner competencies, an index of learning behaviors, an index of discipline integration, or others defined by the institution. When data entry, which is secure to the course level, is complete users may choose to browse a variety of graphic representations of their curriculum, or either preview or print a variety of reports that offer more detail about the content and adequacy of their curriculum. The progress of all data entry can be monitored by the database manager over the course of an academic year, and all reports contain extensive missing data reports to ensure that the user knows whether they are studying complete or partial data. Institutions using the beta version of the program have reported considerable satisfaction with its functionality and have also offered a variety of design and interface enhancements. The anticipated release date for Curriculum Analysis Tools (CATs) is the first quarter of 1995.
1991年，一个由牙科学院和相关牙科项目组成的联盟成立，其明确目的是创建一个可供最终用户修改的课程数据库程序[1]。1994年4月，软件CATs（课程分析工具的首字母缩写）的测试版（用FoxPro(TM) 2.5编写的Beta 2.5）发布，供该联盟60个成员机构中的30多个使用，其余机构则要么等待该程序的麦金塔（TM）版或视窗（TM）版，要么根本还没准备好启动机构课程分析项目。此版本发布后不久，基于对Beta 2.5设计与编码结构的全面批判以及用户反馈，重新编写了设计规范。结果就是Beta 3.0，它被设计用于适应任何以英语或法语为语言之一的国家的任何健康专业课程。鉴于该程序广泛使用屏幕生成工具，提供第二种语言的屏幕显示相当容易。随着越来越多的语言作为统一医学语言系统的一部分可供使用，用于记录课程内容，该程序的设计将允许纳入这些语言。当软件到达一个新机构时，语言和健康专业的选择将已预先选定，课程数据库管理员只需确定成员机构所在的国家。完成这些“宏观”的最终用户决策后，数据库管理员可以转向一组更具体的最终用户问题，包括：1）为分析所选的课程视图将由课程主任创建（提供者输入结构化课程大纲）还是由学生创建（消费者输入课堂总结）？；2）所提供的课程大纲或课堂模块中的哪些元素将被使用？；3）将包括哪些内部课程验证措施（如果有的话）？；4）将包括哪些外部验证措施（如果有的话）。外部措施可以包括认证标准、入门级从业者能力、学习行为指标、学科整合指标或机构定义的其他指标。当课程级别的安全数据输入完成后，用户可以选择浏览其课程的各种图形表示，或者预览或打印各种报告，这些报告提供了有关其课程内容和充分性的更多详细信息。数据库管理员可以在一学年的过程中监控所有数据输入的进度，并且所有报告都包含大量缺失数据报告，以确保用户知道他们正在研究的是完整数据还是部分数据。使用该程序测试版的机构对其功能表示相当满意，并且还提出了各种设计和界面改进建议。课程分析工具（CATs）的预计发布日期是1995年第一季度。
