Improving Medical Students’ Learning Experience of Pathology by Online Practical Sessions through Virtual Microscopy

Abstract

ABSTRACT:
 Objective: To assess the impact of interactive virtual pathology slides on students’ understanding of pathological disease processes.
 Materials & Methods: The study was conducted at Shifa College of medicine, Islamabad. Class of 3rd year MBBS, comprising of 111 students, was divided into two groups during two teaching modules. All students received online lectures prior to practical sessions. In the first module, one group was taught virtual slides through online interactive sessions, whereas the second group was taught same set of slides, using light microscopy and glass slides. Both groups were assessed at the end of the module by online test and their scores were compared. Similar exercise was repeated in the second module in which the control group became the test group to remove the selection bias. Questionnaire feedback was taken from students to get their perceptions. The results were compared by applying t-test and p-value was calculated.
 Results: The mean score of test group (group-1) in first module was 14.90 whereas mean score of control group (group-2) was 10.99. The t test was applied, and p-value calculated was significant (p=0.04). In the second module the groups were flipped. The mean score of test group (group-2) was 14.29 whereas control group (group-1) was 10.09. The p value was calculated which was again significant (p=0.04). The students gave their feedback through questionnaire.
 Conclusion: Overall, we believe that the use of virtual microscopy significantly improves student’s understanding of pathological lesions.
 Keywords: Education, medical, pathology, undergraduate, virtual microscopy.

Virtual Versus Light Microscopy Usage among Students: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analytic Evidence in Medical Education

“…Development of diagnostic and practical skills during laboratory sessions was an important finding [33,39,48,53,56,58,59,64]. Studies also reported that VM promotes selfdirected learning [31,35,38,41,48,58,59,64] and thus an overall better method of learning for exam preparation for the students [32,38,52,53,56].…”

“…Improved student and faculty rapport [33,34,42,45,51,52,56,60] as well as better cooperation and participation amongst students was another interesting finding [20,[31][32][33][34]36,43,52,57,60,61,66,67].…”

“…The teaching faculty also reported higher levels of satisfaction with VM use [20,35,42,57,59] and also reported VM as a time-saving and cost-effective teaching method [20,[31][32][33]35,36,42,57,67].…”

“…Technical and internet issues while accessing the slides were the main disadvantages [22,33,38,41,44,57,67]. Few studies reported less interaction and impaired social connections along with a lack of faculty feedback as main disadvantages [22,41,44].…”

“…A subgroup analysis on studies of low risk or bias compared to higher risk of bias was also performed based on the results of the NOS scale (Figure 5). [20,[31][32][33]35,44,45,50,52,57,59,60,63,64].…”