Initial Experiences of Creating Multimedia Computer Simulations to Replace Pharmacology Practicals

The replacement of traditional practicals by CAL simulations was prompted by a combination of economic factors, a decreased level of technical support and the requirement for a large capital investment to replace old and broken equipment. In an economic climate which promised only further increases in the number of undergraduates and no assured commensurate increase in resources, CAL appeared to be a possible alternative (Brown et al , 1988). Our only previous attempt to produce our own CAL package had been written in Turbo Basic on a 286 PC. It had involved considerable time and effort and the results were not particularly realistic. The increase in computing power offered by the 486 series of PCs, availability of low cost sound and video capture expansion cards, and the emergence of authoring systems, such as Toolbook, Hypercard and Authorware , appeared to provide an opportunity to produce better simulations (Purcell, 1993; Hartley, 1993).