Peer Review

Blaufuss Multimedia Heart Sounds and Cardiac Arrhythmias Tutorial

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Reviewed:: Feb 3, 2026 by Health Sciences

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Blaufuss Multimedia Heart Sounds and Cardiac Arrhythmias Tutorial is a web site containing tutorials and multimedia animations. The purpose of the site is to allow visitors to to see and hear extensive digital recordings of actual patients, with high-resolution animations, ECGs and explanatory text.

The heart sounds tutorial focuses on four common valve problems: aortic regurgitation, aortic stenosis, mitral regurgitation, and mitral stenosis. The cardiac arrhythmias tutorial aims to improve a health care providers competency with several different types of supraventricular tachycardia (SVT).

David Criley is the author, and Blaufuss Medical Multimedia is the company responsible for distribution of medical simulations including the heart sounds and cardiac arrhythmia web site. Features

Features of the web site include animations that show abstract concepts including the etiology of split S2 sounds, abnormal sounds, and abnormal conduction problems. The animations can be viewed slowly for more close inspection or at real-time. Real movie clips show the appearance of the external chest wall and neck when an abnormal sound is present. Of course sounds are used extensively in the heart sounds tutorial. Quizzes are provided at the end of each tutorial. There is no teachers guide or learning goals that are visible on the web site. Key words include the following: heart sounds, valvar disease, arrhythmias, and supraventricular tachycardia,

Type of Material:

Blaufuss Multimedia Heart Sounds and Cardiac Arrhythmias Tutorial contains animations, tutorials, and some simulation. There are two tutorials: heart sounds which contains four valvar abnormalities and SVT arrhythmia which contains five types of SVT. In each of the tutorials there are sounds, images, animations, movies, and text to assist users to understand the complex concepts in care of patients with cardiac problems.

Recommended Uses:

The tutorials can be used in the classroom setting with instructors with access to high quality speaker systems and projection systems. An instructor would be able to connect concepts under study with the tutorial materials.
Students who are studying cardiology could use the tutorials as an adjunct to course materials.
Students could use the learning resource for remediation learning.

Technical Requirements:

Users are recommended to have a 800 x 600 pixels screen, 16 bit sound card, Netscape 4.7 or higher, Internet
Explorer 5.5 or higher. Processors slower than 200MHZ with less than 64 MB RAM will have possible problems with video and animations. Need Adobe Shockewave & Flash Player, Free download link offered. Large files need time to load.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Author states that the interactive quiz will test ability to identify correctly the first and second heart sounds, extra sounds, diastolic and systolic murmurs in recordings of actual patients, using computer animation of the carotid pulse for timing. Implied learning goals: The learner will be able to accurately identify the four common valvar lesions in the left heart by moving a virtual stethoscope over an adult simulation chest to listen to the heart while veiwing video of the patient's pulsation in the neck, percordium and/or extremeties.

Identify abnormal heart sounds associated with aortic and mitral valve disease by inspection and ausculation
Recognize ECG characteristics of five types of supraventricular tachycardia

Target Student Population:

Students in programs leading to degrees in medicine, nursing, or allied health are appropriate users of these learning objects could benefit from this learning resource.

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

If students little or no exposure to the concepts, basic anatomy and physiology associated with normal heart sounds and normal conduction should examined before using these tutorials. Students should also understand how to use a stethoscope and use of the functions.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

The scope of the tutorials is appropriate to meet the learning goals.
The sounds and animations are easy to hear and see.
Teaching points are important.
Content is valid using realistic cases, recordings, and radiographic films.

Concerns:

There are no normal heart sounds and few commonly occurring abnormal sounds presented in the tutorials. Learner would need to have this knowledge prior to beginning these tutorials.
Heart sounds are inconsistent in the base level volume across the program which on some computers can impact the accuracy fo interpretation and quiz answers.
The lack of references, dating of information or tutorial, and lack of additional information on the authors decreases the overall quality rating. The only references are under " More information" at the base of page one and may not be for only this tutorial.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

The purpose of the heart sounds tutorials is to teach advanced conditions using graphics, animations, and audio. The tutorials achieve their goals.
The varied interactive nature of the multimedia increases the effectiveness as a teaching/learning tool since this meets the needs more learning styles. It also uses multiple senses in its use of audio, video, images, photographs, and text.
As a remediation module the tutorial is well organized and focused. It has excellent demonstrations and get the learner interacting immediately.
It is written at the 10 to 12 grade level and has a small % of passive sentences in the 10 to 15% range to keep the students engaged and understanding the material.
The use of 3-d modueling to peel and unpeel the heart and animation to visualize difficult concepts increases the effectiveness.

Concerns:

There is some lack of cohesion in the tutorials that decrease their effectiveness.
The quiz offers feed back on right or wrong but not the why or differences
between right and wrong.
There is no quick way to review that one area from the quiz page.
For the learner who needs to print the information there is no easy way to do this.
Some screens allow right-click to print the page, others are blocked, and still others only print one frame or portion.
The issues of 508 regualtions are not addressed. If there is a color blind issue the red and green quiz right and wrong markings will not work and the x through a wrong answer does not show the correct one.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

The site is easy to navigate.
The course design is clean and uncluttered.
All links work.
The additional screens that one opens are separate and you do not lose the original tutorial screen so returnign to it is easy.
Jargon is explained.
If directions for using a media are blended at the bottom of some text the screen gives you hints on how to manuver. For example, if a list is there a bar moves down it until you eyes are attracted to the movement. There is then wording near by to say essentially move over and click on the bar to stop the movement and select what you want to see. li> Font good size, good contrast in each screen, good use of white space.

Concerns:

The instructions are not consistently located.
Some pages have images, sonds and film that are slow loading due to size so a slow modem would be problematic. Patience at times is needed
Once in the first tutorial the other items related to SVT tutorial at the bottom of that first screen are not carried over. There is no written instructions on how to find those other tutorials until you stumble back to the very first screen and see them again.
Sounds do not have a standard base level so you need to guess is there no
sound or do I need to adjust the speaker sound. li>The tutorial quiz let you know if you did not fill in all parts to one question but that is the only real help. If you are on a screen and do not know how to move the stetescope you cannot find out a help quickly or to peel an item or move an item.

Other Issues and Comments:: This self-paced interactive tutorial is packed with multimedia in a varied manner. The use of real patients, sounds and animation in such an interlinked manner bring difficult concepts to life for such a wide range of learners.
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