Frank Starmer

Biography

I have spent the past 40 years in academic research and teaching. Over time, I discovered that teaching was just another kind of learning. I discovered that fun in the classroom came from learning together and avoiding issues likely to be forgotton. Learning is activity dependent while forgetting is a result of information disuse. The Internet brings to the learner's work bench the ability to escape the "just-in-case" learning model that results is a high rate of forgetting and replace it with just-in-time learning driven by use of Internet resources as an extension of my short term memory. At the new Duke - National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, we are all about Internet-centric learning. Our goal is to explore ways to train medical scientists that minimizes exposure to forgetting and leverages search engines and critical thinging to build a just-in-time life-long learning paradigm.