Evaluation of Virtual Microscope as an Interactive Educational Tool in Microbiology and Pathology in Medical Curriculum

Abstract

Teaching microbiology and pathology in medical education is predominantly through didactic lectures. Imparting knowledge through other forms of instruction is often lacking in medical education. Other innovative forms of imparting microbiology and pathology education, such as learning through virtual microscope (VM), is necessary in the advancing trend of the medical curriculum. With increasing number of disease processes, and morphological abnormalities like inflammation, necrosis, abscess, metastasis, especially in the study of cancers of diffierent microscopic variants, and infections with diagnostic difficulties, some medical universities are now using more state-of-the-art technology driven software. The ultimate goal of the study was to provide options for students and teachers to use virtual microscope learning modules corresponding to key topics in microbiology and pathology. Through the microbiology and pathology sessions in years 1 and 2 in the medical curriculum, we developed a series of virtual microscopy sessions. A total of nine pre-clinical modules consisting of 224 respondents were done. The students were invited to take part in an evaluation exercise consisting of basic survey questions. Question areas included the most memorable experience, the course's influence on the student-student and teacher-student relationship, usefulness during pre-clinical years of medical school, and skills which would help them in clinical years. The anonymous data were analyzed qualitatively. A significant number of students responded positively for three important themes: (1) the virtual microscope sessions positively influenced more enthusiasm in learning microbiology and pathology (84%), (2) both VM and a clinicopathological discussion in the form of case study were necessary to achieve those skills (76%), and (3) the VM sessions led to a sense of personal development as a student (71%). An interactive discussion with the students revealed that they were interested and quite enthusiastic to gain knowledge by this module, which depicted the microscopic picture with some salient text notes, and they felt that this would also be useful for them in tackling the exams, and in future, during their clinical exposure.