Anatomy educators are being tasked with delivering the same quantity and quality of material in the face of fewer classroom and laboratory hours. As a result they have turned to computer-aided instruction (CAI) to supplement and augment curriculum delivery. Research on the satisfaction and use of anatomy videos, a form of CAI, on examination…

Anatomy teaching methods have evolved as the medical undergraduate curriculum has modernized. Traditional teaching methods of dissection, prosection, tutorials and lectures are now supplemented by anatomical models and e-learning. Despite these changes, the preferences of medical students and anatomy faculty towards both traditional and…

Three-dimensional (3D) digital animations were used to teach the human musculoskeletal system to first year kinesiology students. The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of this method by comparing two groups from two different academic years during two of their official required anatomy examinations (trunk and upper limb…

The University of Debrecen's Faculty of Medicine has an international, multilingual student population with anatomy courses taught in English to all but Hungarian students. An elective computer-assisted gross anatomy course, the Computer Human Anatomy (CHA), has been taught in English at the Anatomy Department since 2008. This course focuses on an…

Medical school curricula are undergoing transformational change in response to calls for integrating content across courses and years to enable better retention and application and for individualizing learning to meet the diverse backgrounds and thus differing needs of students. To address the related teaching challenges, faculty can employ solid…

The adoption of virtual microscopy at the University of Turku, Finland, created a unique real-world laboratory for exploring ways of reforming the learning environment. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the students' reactions and the impact of a set of measures designed to boost an experimental group's understanding of abnormal histology…

Asynchronous online discussion forums are increasingly common in blended learning environments but the relationship to student learning outcomes has not been reported for anatomy teaching. Forums were monitored in two multicampus anatomy courses; an introductory first year course and a second year physiotherapy-specific course. The forums are…

Understanding tissue architecture and the morphological characteristics of cells is a central prerequisite to comprehending the basis of physiological tissue function in healthy individuals and relating this to disease states. Traditionally, medical curricula include courses where students examine glass slides of cytological or tissue samples…

The anatomy curriculum at Namibia's first, and currently only, medical school is clinically oriented, outcome-based, and includes all of the components of modern anatomical sciences i.e., histology, embryology, neuroanatomy, gross, and clinical anatomy. The design of the facilities and the equipment incorporated into these facilities were directed…

This article reports large item effects in a study of computer-based learning of neuroanatomy. Outcome measures of the efficiency of learning, transfer of learning, and generalization of knowledge diverged by a wide margin across test items, with certain sets of items emerging as particularly difficult to master. In addition, the outcomes of…

Online lectures have been used in lieu of live lectures in our gross anatomy and embryology course for the past eight years. We examined patterns of online lecture use by our students and related that use to academic entry measures, gender and examination performance. Detailed access records identified by student were available from server logs.…

Recently, the Medical University of South Carolina adopted a lecture recording system (LRS). A retrospective study of LRS was implemented to document the students' perceptions, pattern of usage, and impact on the students' grades in three basic sciences courses (Cell Biology/Histology, Physiology, and Neurosciences). The number of accesses and…

Anatomy has historically been a cornerstone in medical education regardless of nation or specialty. Until recently, dissection and didactic lectures were its sole pedagogy. Teaching methodology has been revolutionized with more reliance on models, imaging, simulation, and the Internet to further consolidate and enhance the learning experience.…

Web-based computer-aided instruction (CAI) has become increasingly important to medical curricula. This multi-year study investigated the effectiveness of CAI and the factors affecting level of individual use. Three CAI were tested that differed in specificity of applicability to the curriculum and in the level of student interaction with the CAI.…

The increasing complexity of human body models enabled by advances in diagnostic imaging, computing, and growing knowledge calls for the development of a new generation of systems for intelligent exploration of these models. Here, we introduce a novel paradigm for the exploration of digital body models illustrating cerebral vasculature. It enables…