Techniques for providing expert instruction in interpreting outputs of a test instrument to a student who is at a location remote (103) from the expert. The student makes outputs from the test instrument and an interpretation of the outputs available to an expert (129) via a network (113) and the expert makes a comment available to the student in the same fashion. The outputs, the interpretation, and the comment may be made available in real time or in non-real time. In the non-real-time embodiment, the student makes his interpretation by selecting from menus of possible observations and the expert makes comments in the same fashion. Inputs from the menu selections are stored in a database record and a report is generated from the record. One application of the invention is teaching echocardiography.