Nutrition is one of eleven programs available in the Topics in International Health (TIH) CD-ROM Series. The other programs in this series are Diarrhoeal Diseases, HIV/AIDS, Leishmaniasis, Leprosy, Malaria (second edition), Schistosomiasis, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Sickle Cell Disease, Trachoma, and Tuberculosis. A twelfth program, Acute Respiratory Infection, is planned. See www.cabi.org/Publishing/Products/CDROM/TIH/ for information about the other programs in the TIH series. Designed for use as an educational resource in tropical and international health, this series is aimed at medical and life sciences students, teachers, health care professionals, academics, and researchers. Each program provides three complementary resources—interactive tutorials that provide a self-directed learning framework with clear learning objectives, self-assessment tests, references to encourage further reading, and summaries to reinforce key points; an image collection that is a searchable database of photographic images and accompanying information useful as a detailed reference source or for examples of practical exercises and lectures; and a glossary that defines the medical and scientific terms used in the tutorials and image collection.
Nutrition has twelve interactive tutorials: overview, epidemiology and aetiology of malnutrition, malnutrition and infection, maternal and child health, prevention of malnutrition, assessment of nutritional status, treatment of severe malnutrition in children, emergency situations, vitamin A deficiency, iron deficiency anaemia, iodine deficiency disorders, and diet and chronic diseases. Clicking on a tutorial brings up a window with help and exit buttons at the top of the screen and main menu, notepad, references, glossary, history, contents, find, and left and right arrow buttons at the bottom of the screen. The main menu button takes one back to the list of tutorials. The notepad is a convenient feature that allows one to make notes while using the program. These notes must be saved to be available for viewing in the next tutorial. It would be helpful if the program alerted one when there is unsaved work in the notepad before shutting down. The references button only displays on those screens for which there are associated references, where they are displayed in a separate window. The glossary also opens in a separate window and can be printed out in its entirety if desired. The history button shows a list of the most recently visited screens. The contents button presents an outline of the tutorial's contents; the find button allows one to search for specific text; and the left and right arrow buttons allow one to move through the screens one at a time. Underlined text is hyperlinked; clicking on underlined text will link to additional related information. Hyperlinked information appears in a new window, and the previously displayed window disappears.
Each of the program's peer-reviewed tutorials lists four or more clear objectives and has at least four assessment tests and one overall tutorial assessment test. The tutorials use a very nice combination of photos, illustrations, charts, and tables. Lots of color is used, and each tutorial incorporates at least some animation. The language style is simple and direct. Words or phrases that the producers feel may be unfamiliar to users are hyperlinked to definitions. At any point in the tutorials, one can jump to another part of the program to review specific information. Each tutorial is concluded with four or more summary statements. The last screen of each tutorial gives the user options for exploring further information. The assessments are well done. They are provided in various formats including true-false, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank questions, and they reinforce what the student is learning without being overly difficult.
The image collection consists of 1,104 images, mostly photographs, which can be viewed one screen at a time. Alternatively, one can retrieve all of the images that match a particular search strategy. These images can then be saved as a group and recalled for viewing at a later time—an excellent feature for teaching purposes. Each image screen includes the image title and description as well as a keyword search tab (keywords are terms used to index an image), a text search tab (for free-text searching), a search history tab (showing searches already completed), a thumbnail view tab (to view six thumbnail images at a time), and a gallery view tab (to view twenty-four images at a time). The keyword search tab also includes a “Create a search” box for creating canned keyword searches using Boolean logic. The images are clear, detailed, and uniformly high quality.
The third program component is the glossary that is accessible as a standalone resource or from within the tutorials and image collection. The glossary defines words in a pop-up window that can contain other hyperlinked words that are linked to their definitions. Using sound and including pronunciations would have been a nice enhancement to the program. The glossary is also accessible from the image collection.
Although the only telephone number supplied for technical support is a United Kingdom number (+44.0.1491.832111), an email address is also provided (cabi@cabi.org).
This reviewer found Nutrition to be extremely informative and very well designed. It includes a good mix of photographs, illustrations, charts, and tables and uses color and animation effectively and not excessively. Particularly impressive were the variety of assessment tests, the breadth and depth of the image collection, and the pricing sensitivity for developing countries, where this product may be especially useful.