Teaching probabilistic medical reasoning with the Elvira software.

The UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia) was founded in 1972. Its purpose was to offer high-level training to those students that could not attend a regular university because of their jobs, the lack of a university near their homes, or any other reason. Currently, the UNED is the biggest Spanish university, with 200,000 pre-graduate students. Its structure consists of a Central Office and a network of support centers. The Central Office (Sede Central), located in Madrid, comprises the management offices and eleven schools that gather a total of 1,200 teachers, 62% of which are doctors— the highest rate among Spanish universities. Additionally, the UNED has 156 support centers in Spain and 15 centers in other countries, in which the students can perform administrative procedures, receive tutorial assistance, access bibliographical and computational resources and be examined three times a year: in February, June, and September. The UNED has special programs for students who are abroad, students in prison (there are currently 600), and handicapped students. The teaching materials made up by the UNED consist basically of printed stuff (guides, text books, addendas, etc.) and audiovisual materials (videos, cassettes, multimedia contents on CDROM, and radio and TV programs). The departments teaching at the School of Computer Science (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería Informática) have been using the Internet as a mean of contact with their students at least since 1995. Currently the UNED is in the process of implementing a program that aims at offering Internet support for all its studies. Of course, the students can still contact their teachers at the Central Office and their tutors at the support centers by means of telephone, fax, conventional mail, or personal meetings.