This software has been supplied free of charge for use in your own teaching and for the

purposes of evaluation. We would welcome any comments concerning the software, the notes and your students responses to the CAL module. The CAL module was initially designed for optometry students, but is now being used by our science students as well. We feel that it is a useful learning tool for most students who have to deal with autonomic pharmacology. The student notes and tutor notes files are what we have used successfully in our courses and you can either use them as they stand or use them as the basis for localized versions. If you would like a version of the software with the language changed to your local language, simply send us a translation and we will make the required changes; you will see that there is very little text in the CAL to change. Translation of the notes files would also be appreciated. Three functionally identical versions of the application are included on this CD, one for classic Mac OS (7.59.2), one for Mac OS X, and one for Windows (3.1XP). Installation is simply a matter of dragging the application file onto a hard disk. The Classic Mac OS version will run on both PPC and 68000-series Macs. Testing of compatibility is far from complete, but they do run on the machines that we have readily to hand for testing. The hardware requirements are not very high and so the programs should run adequately on the old computers that tend to be found in teaching laboratories. Please report any difficulties you might have in running the programs, we may be able to remedy them. The software will be distributed through the University of Melbourne Press http://www.mup.unimelb.edu.au/catalogue/CDROM.html in the near future, and intend to implement a flexible pricing structure with the price calculated as a fixed fraction (small!) of the standard lecturer salary at your university. Enquiries from others should be directed to that web site, or to us: Michael J. Lew michaell@unimelb.edu.au James Ziogas jamesz@unimelb.edu.au

The following abstract, presented at the Asilomar pharmacology teaching satellite to the San Francisco 2002 IUPHAR congress, describes the rationale behind the design of this CAL module.
A CAL for learning about autonomic drugs through hypothesis-based exploration. Michael J. Lew1, Gregor E. Kennedy2 & James Ziogas1 1Department of Pharmacology,2Biomedical Multimedia Unit, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Australia A computer-aided learning module (CAL) was devised to help students understand the autonomic nervous system and major categories of drugs that modulate its activity. A specific design goal for the CAL was to encourage students to form and test their own hypotheses rather than to simply follow a list of instructions. The CAL presents the eyes of four patients with different autonomic disorders presented as asymmetric pupilary function and eye redness. Students are asked to form hypotheses regarding the possible nature of each disorder after observing the pupilary responses to blinking and altered ambient light intensities, and then go on to test these hypotheses by observing the effects of drugs that modulate autonomic function in the eyes. As such, the CAL presents an ill-defined problem with the problem space restricted by limiting the number of types of intervention and by having each drug available at only a single dose level. In order to form appropriate hypotheses students need to have a tentative understanding of the mechanisms involved in autonomic function and control of the pupils. Similarly, in order to choose appropriate drugs to test their hypotheses students need to have some understanding of the action of each drug. Rather than being told what the autonomic mechanisms and drug actions are, students explore an ill-defined problem and arrive at greater understanding through hypothesis testing and exploration and with peer and demonstrator support. This creates an intrinsically motivating learning experience for students. This CAL has proved popular with students and staff and seems to promote greater student engagement and interaction than our more prescriptive CAL programs. We ascribe much of this difference to the ill-defined nature of the problem and the omission of a prescriptive list of tasks.