The didactic evolution of classes at the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, where I studied, graduated, completed my Ph.D. and currently lecture, has improved considerably in the last 50 years.

During these decades, the development was remarkable and was due to the development of audio-visual resources, with both visual and sound components being used in the preparation of theoretical, theoretical-practical and practical classes.

At the beginning, in the 1970s when I was still a student, there were pictures, hanging on supports, which depicted a few images, or were drawn on the slate chalk board, which, due to the time they took to be drawn and sometimes to the lecturer’s poor drawing skills made the classes boring and imperceptible regarding to what they intended to represent.

There was no sound backing in this decade, it only emerged at the end of the following decade. Some classrooms had poor acoustics, which limited the lecturer, who had to know how to project his voice in order to make the content of the lecture audible. I remember, for example, an obstetrics class taught at Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital, in an amphitheatre with bad acoustic conditions where those sitting in the rows further away from the lecturer could not hear anything. One day a lecturer succeeded in making all the students understand the content of the class. I was perplexed by this, and later I learned that the lecturer who had made the contents audible so clearly was a well-known lyric singer, Dr Álvaro Malta.

However, there were classrooms with bad acoustic conditions, such as the Anatomy room, which had a drawing on the floor, which still exists today, within which the lecturer should stay in order to be heard throughout the room.

The sound backing came in the 1980s, in the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Medicine of Lisbon, with handheld microphones, which in the beginning of the following decade was generalized to the different amphitheatres. The appearance of lapel microphones took place in the 2000s, first in the Aula Magna and later throughout the faculty.

Regarding visual resources, after the phase of the images displayed in the classroom, black and white slides were used, sometimes produced by technicians with photographic training, which some privileged institutes had, such as Physiology.

In the 1980s, to make classes more attractive, some lecturers painted the white letters of slides with black backgrounds with felt-tip pens, or placed coloured cellophane paper (red or yellow) on their borders.

There was always the possibility of making blue background slides, made by professionals, very beautiful but quite expensive. This technique was used whenever there was a more important presentation, for example in Ph.D. examinations or in scientific presentations. A common problem with using slides was their "jamming" in the projectors.

In the 1990s, there was the transparent paper that allowed photocopying images from textbooks and drawing inside with the help of special pens, and other images or captions in order to make the classes more didactic, attractive and interactive, with the help of overhead projectors. The poor quality of this paper damaged the photocopying machines because of the intense light focus required to photocopy. However, some lecturers used this material to make their full readings during their lectures.

But the breakthrough in class design came with PowerPoint and the digitization of images. Although created in the 1990s, it was not until the middle of the following decade that it became commonly used, due to the large investment made by the faculty. This allowed the creation of animated or non-animated text, digitized images from books or scientific works and projecting using data-show.

Finally, with the creation of the Internet, interactive websites emerged that could be projected during the classes.

Professor Alberto Escalda 
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon