Five years of experience teaching pathology to dental students using the WebMicroscope

Abstract

BackgroundWe describe development and evaluation of the user-friendly web based virtual microscopy - WebMicroscope for teaching and learning dental students basic and oral pathology. Traditional students microscopes were replaced by computer workstations.MethodsThe transition of the basic and oral pathology courses from light to virtual microscopy has been completed gradually over a five-year period. A pilot study was conducted in academic year 2005/2006 to estimate the feasibility of integrating virtual microscopy into a traditional light microscopy-based pathology course. The entire training set of glass slides was subsequently converted to virtual slides and placed on the WebMicroscope server. Giving access to fully digitized slides on the web with a browser and a viewer plug-in, the computer has become a perfect companion of the student.ResultsThe study material consists now of over 400 fully digitized slides which covering 15 entities in basic and systemic pathology and 15 entities in oral pathology. Digitized slides are linked with still macro- and microscopic images, organized with clinical information into virtual cases and supplemented with text files, syllabus, PowerPoint presentations and animations on the web, serving additionally as material for individual studies. After their examinations, the students rated the use of the software, quality of the images, the ease of handling the images, and the effective use of virtual slides during the laboratory practicals. Responses were evaluated on a standardized scale. Because of the positive opinions and support from the students, the satisfaction surveys had shown a progressive improvement over the past 5 years. The WebMicroscope as a didactic tool for laboratory practicals was rated over 8 on a 1-10 scale for basic and systemic pathology and 9/10 for oral pathology especially as various students’ suggestions were implemented. Overall, the quality of the images was rated as very good.ConclusionsAn overwhelming majority of our students regarded a possibility of using virtual slides at their convenience as highly desirable. Our students and faculty consider the use of the virtual microscope for the study of basic as well as oral pathology as a significant improvement over the light microscope.

Optical versus virtual: Teaching assistant perceptions of the use of virtual microscopy in an undergraduate human anatomy course

“…Instructors appreciate the ability to point out and compare features on the virtual microscope to multiple students at the same time, increasing collaboration among faculty and students (Braun and Kearns, 2008;Husmann et al, 2009;Triola and Holloway, 2011). Access to the virtual microscope outside of scheduled class time has also been cited as an advantage of the virtual microscope (Blake et al, 2003;Bloodgood and Ogilvie, 2006;Kumar et al, 2006;Husmann et al, 2009;Merk et al, 2010;Szymas and Lundin, 2011). A web-based virtual microscope also opens up the opportunity to teach histology across several campuses, locations, or even countries while using the same teaching material, creating a more equal learning experience for the students and minimizing the cost of maintaining the virtual microscopy program (Lundin et al, 2008;Pinder et al, 2008) Although the majority of studies have focused on the implementation of the virtual microscope into the medical school curriculum (Harris et al, 2001;Blake et al, 2003;Krippendorf and Lough, 2005;Bloodgood and Ogilvie, 2006;Merk et al, 2010;Paulsen et al, 2010;Triola and Holloway, 2011), recent studies are emerging that assess the utility of integrating virtual histology into the undergraduate curriculum as well (Husmann et al, 2009).…”

“…Web-based virtual microscopy provides a platform similar to the optical microscope to study tissues, allowing movement of the ''slide'' in order to examine multiple sections of the tissue and allows for changes in magnification. Virtual microscopy has been adapted to several higher-level professional programs, such as medical (Blake et al, 2003;Krippendorf and Lough, 2005;Helle et al, 2011), dental (Szymas and Lundin, 2011), graduate residency programs (Bruch et al, 2009;Koch et al, 2009) and veterinary schools (Mills et al, 2007), and specifically to courses like medical histology (Scoville and Buskirk, 2007;Schmidt et al, 2011), pathology (Dee and Meyerholz, 2007;Braun and Kearns, 2008;Cunningham et al, 2008;Kim et al, 2008), dental histology (Weaker and Herbert, 2009), and veterinary cytopathology (Neel et al, 2007).…”

Current Status of Whole-Slide Imaging in Education

“…All studies agree that WSI improves collaboration between students and self-learning [6,9,16,24,33,34]. Teachers also positively evaluate WSI because, although there is initially a significant increase in the time related to the preparation of the material, in the end it results in a significant reduction in the time spent in the preparation of the lessons [19,35]. WSI provides a more complete approach to the cases by adding clinical information, radiological imaging, macroscopic images, immunohistochemical stains and molecular data to the virtual histological images [33,36].…”

“…Many of these centers have evaluated the opinion of students after the introduction of WSI, and all have reported very positive feedback [9,26,30,31]. One of the most valued advantages is the improved accessibility to the slides with WSI, allowing the student to access the slides at any time and from any place [10,14,19]. Several studies have shown that this is one of the most appreciated features of WSI, and this was the most prized feature in a study conducted at our institution [10].…”

“…With an appropriate bandwidth, virtual microscopes can be used simultaneously by a large number of people, thereby surpassing the restrictions related to a limited number of CLMs in a laboratory [4,9,12,16,17] and stimulating cooperation between students [9,12,15,17,18,19]. Moreover, the interaction between teachers and students is improved by viewing the same image at the same time in the classroom, which allows bringing up questions easily and improves the learning curve [15,18,19]. …”