Medical and healthcare practice is likely to see fundamental changes in the future that will require a different approach to the way in which we educate, train, and assess the next generation of healthcare professionals. The anatomical sciences will need to be part of that challenge so they continue to play a full role in preparing students with the knowledge and ever increasingly the skills and competencies that will contribute to the fundamentals of their future capacity to practice effectively. Although there have been significant advances in anatomical science pedagogy, by reviewing learning and assessment in an apparently unrelated field, provides an opportunity to bring a different perspective and enable appropriate challenge of the current approaches in anatomy. Design learning has had to continually reimagine itself in response to the shifting landscape in design practice and the threats associated with technology and societal change. Design learning has also long used a student‐centric active pedagogy and allied authentic assessment methods and, therefore, provides an ideal case study to help inform future changes required in anatomical learning and assessment.
Digital automation is on the rise in a diverse range of industries. The technologies employed here often make use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its common form, machine learning (ML) to augment or replace the work completed by human agents. The recent emergence of a variety of design automation platforms inspired the authors to undertake a review of the research literature on the impact of Automation, AI and ML on visual communication, and its subset practice of graphic design, with a view to understanding the implications for the education of practitioners entering that specific field. This review discovered that there was relatively little research published on the topic but what did exist noted that graphic design as we have known it has an uncertain future. Furthermore, the scant literature argued for a shift in educational and professional focus away from the aesthetic and technical skills required to design visual modes of communication and towards a deeper engagement with the softer, more human skills associated with negotiation, facilitation and judgement. The paucity of literature on this topic suggests to the authors that visual communication design education and the industry are poorly prepared for the impact of automation, AI and ML on them.
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