A Unique and Effective Method of Anatomy Education

Abstract

At the New York University College of Dentistry (NYU Dentistry), we are faced with the challenge of teaching Head and Neck Anatomy to a class of approximately 380 first‐year students. We have developed an innovative anatomy curriculum that has proven effective in facilitating students' learning and long‐term retention of the material and has the added benefit of being time‐ and cost‐efficient. We believe that the main factors in the success of our course are the frequent low‐stakes quizzes, the small group setting, and the use of plastinated specimens in place of wet cadavers.Our anatomy course consists of lectures and laboratory sessions. Students attend 52 hours of lectures in a traditional auditorium setting. All of the lectures are recorded and archived using Mediasite, so that students can review them at their leisure. Students are then divided into 32 small groups consisting of 8 to 14 students. Each group attends 23 lab sessions (110 minutes per session) led by a faculty member. In the labs, students work together to identify anatomical structures on plastinated specimens or bones. The instructor facilitates collaboration amongst the students and leads them in a discussion of cross‐sectional anatomy.Frequent low‐stakes evaluations allow students to monitor their progress in the course. Students take an online 10–30 question quiz before each lab and a 5–10 question quiz at the end of each lab (together these pre‐lab and exit quizzes make up 27.5% of the overall grade). The remainder of the grade in the course is determined by three written multiple‐choice exams and one practical exam. We maintain a website with additional resources students can use, including practice questions, photographs of plastinates, animations, and videos. This year, we have also linked to study sets that we have created using Cerego.We have previously published about the success we had in terms of learning goals and student satisfaction after switching from cadaver dissection to plastinations (Baker et al., 2013). Our curriculum has demonstrated continued success over the last 5 years. Within this time period, on the NBDE Part I, NYU Dentistry students have achieved a mean first‐time pass rate of 99.3% and an average anatomy score of 1.73 standard deviations above the national mean. We would like to share our methods with instructors at other institutions.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.