On the Way to Virtual
Robert W. Ogilvie · The FASEB Journal · 2016
In my experience as a career teacher of medical histology I have seen the medium for illustrating histological structure in lectures and labs evolve from intricate colored chalk drawings to dynamic Internet accessible virtual slides. My first exposure to histology was in a course taught by two professors at Ohio State University in 1958 that used intricate colored drawings on the classroom chalk board to illustrate the lectures. Since that time, during my 45+ year career in several medical schools directing medical histology courses, I have personally experienced the digital microscopy movement that began in the 1970's and today has a central place in the teaching of histology. In this presentation, the incremental application of new technologies during the digital microscopy movement to facilitate students learning histology will be highlighted concluding with an example of the application of virtual microscopy in teaching histology in an online histology course that originated at the University of South Carolina in the spring of 2011. This upper level course for college juniors, seniors and graduate students offered by the Department of Biological Sciences includes narrated video lectures and the utilization of two virtual lab resources. The narrated lectures that include interactive questions at the end for self‐assessment are available to students via Blackboard, the university's course management system. The lecture slides with the narrative text are provided to the students as PDF documents for study offline. All quizzes and exams are administered online. The virtual lab Internet accessible resources are WebMic that delivers nested static images with two opportunities for self‐assessment, and Virtual Slides that are dynamic and are posed to the students as unknowns during examinations. This course has completed 14 semesters with over 1500 students having completed the course. The majority of students enrolled in the course are planning to apply to medical or dental schools but there are students from most all of the disciplines and colleges on campus enrolling in the course each semester. A total of forty two students spread over four summer semesters, 2012 – 2015, took the course while enrolled in a one year certificate program designed for failed applicants to medical or dental school to improve their chance of being admitted. The online histology course is the first in the curriculum of this special program at the Medical University of South Carolina. The presentation will conclude with thoughts about how taking a histology course in college may impact the student's experience in the modern medical and dental school curricula.