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Administration page of FACS system showing flow diagram of completed case in authoring window. The design of this case is linear with consecutive violet boxes linked by arrows. Feedback is provided by the green boxes (branches). There are also start (blue) and completion (pink) of the case boxes. A red randomizer box is also available (not used). Pathways through the case can be checked and sections duplicated for future use.
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FACS uses a flowchart authoring style like VUE, which facilitates the easy creation of cases (Figure 1). The web pages are linked together using the flowchart function in the authoring window (Figure 1).
Typical edit page from the FACS authoring system. The editing is done on the top half of the page where teachers can type the information directly into the text box, but some HTML is also needed. Under the editing textbox is a browse button that allows authors to attach videos and other multimedia material, as well as links to useful websites. The bottom part of the page is the preview screen that shows an outline of how the page will look without an HTML template design. Note the table and different font effects. To the right is a list of multiple-choice type questions selections, which are written in a separate editing window.
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The authoring system in FACS provides a number of editing windows, which allows the teacher to write directly onto FACS and add new cases to the bank (Figure 2, top). The teacher can see the content of the web page as it is written (Figure 2, bottom). The authoring system enables teachers to upload multimedia files onto the web pages of the case using Browse (Figure 2). HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to provide text features (eg, font size, color, bold text) and layout on the web page, which may be a problem for those not familiar with HTML web page writing languages (Figure 2). However, it does allow embedding onto any website, so that the final layout of the web page is not only controlled by the FACS page template, but the teacher also has some control over the layout and design of the final web page.
List of supplementary materials that students can read as they are working on the FACS cases. The ones in blue are for the preoperative cases and the ones in red are for the pain management cases. Insert (right) shows typical supplementary page.
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A typical web page from FACS. Note the common web format template for the FACS cases. The main text contents are in the middle of the page with a question (highlighted in yellow) at the bottom of the page. Also included are clinical pictures and links to other web pages. Answer choices are on the right hand side with a running score on the left.
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A running performance score for FACS was also provided (Figure 5).