World Stroke Academy News

16 Dec 2019 Education

The term ‘eLearning’ has only been in existence since 1999. It was however, originally documented way back in the 1840s, a man named Isaac Pitman taught his pupils shorthand via correspondence, adopting the idea that learning can take place indirectly.

Then, in 1954, BF Skinner, a Harvard Professor, invented the “teaching machine”, which enabled schools to administer programmed instruction to their students. Fast-forward to the 1960s and the first computer-based training program was introduced to the world. In 2010 the current President of the World Stroke Organisation, Professor Michael Brainin saw the potential for continuing medical education (CME) to be transformed into an online e-learning opportunity for stroke professionals, developed by an expert global body. The most important application being to enable a connection between the worlds stroke experts and those at the coal face of the clinical application of stroke and better arm those in the fight against stroke with the tools they need to lower the burden of stroke globally.

As always with the academy we are working on ways to engage different sections of the stroke community in different ways. Currently we are building a bank of case studies of the week and are making a call out to the community for case studies that are clinically applicable to stroke practitioners on the front line in the war against the global burden of this disease!

Since our previous newsletter we have released the following content on the WSA

Paediatric guidelines with Mark Mackay et al.
Kinematics motor control and post-stroke recovery, with WSC presentation and an excellent module from Mindy Levin and colleagues.
Physiotherapy in India with content provided by PN Sylaja who is also a member of the WSO Education Committee.
Imaging of acute ICH with a fantastic presentation also sourced from the WSC in 2018 and delivered by Chitra Venkatsubramian-
Imaging selection in clinical practice WSC2018 presented by Bruce Campbell
Three most important things when running a clinical trial (mini module) Han Christoph Diener-
Biomarkers-methodological evaluation- Catarina Fonseca and an excellent IJS podcast with Lara Boyd
Lipids and stroke module: Cholesterol, statins and ICH, Treatment of Hypercholesterolemia, LDL target values

Over the last 3 months (Sept10th-Dec10th): we have seen user traffic of 682 users accessing our broad and useable content. We have had 300 new followers on Twitter since September; and supported by our assistant Alina Schwarz we have curated our handle with the skills and expertise of stroke experts at conferences (UK stroke forum and World Congress of Neurology) Thanks you to those who attended and supported us by live tweeting!

We are really excited about the content we have pulled together for next year and look forward to even greater engagement and support and we continue to grow!

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Achieving our vision of a life free from stroke is a task that WSO cannot achieve alone. We are committed to building our partnerships at the global, regional and national level to scale up and deliver improvements in prevention, treatment and support to reduce the burden of stroke.