Neato nifty cool or pedagogical advance? Designing effective web‐based tools

Abstract

Anatomical software is growing beyond the simple tasks of presenting information and providing quizzing functions. Movies, reconstructions and virtual dissections allow students to formulate their own questions to research. The bewildering array of software products should give anatomists pause to reexamine their own pedagogy. Without proper guidance that is grounded in a pedagogical approach, students can be distracted rather than helped by computer technology. Combining commercial products with our own, we tailored software to match our approach to teaching anatomy. This pedagogy was developed in collaboration with clinical faculty following an assessment of our previous approach. We strive to integrate software with dissection. Our electronic dissector serves as an interactive research guide to prepare students for dissection. To complement dissection, we developed highly-interactive web activities based on clinical problems. Using a feature of VH Dissector Pro (Toltech, Inc.), we also developed lesson plans that complement the clinical cases students explore during dissection. Unlike an atlas, the lesson plans highlight what we believe to be essential for investigating a specific problem and enable students to manipulate images according to questions they formulate. Tests of long-term recall indicate that this pedagogy, supported by computer technology, improves student preparedness for clerkship training. Supported by US Dept of Ed P116B031017