Is This Mine to Keep? Three‐dimensional Printing Enables Active, Personalized Learning in Anatomy

Abstract

Understanding orbital anatomy is important for optometry students, but the learning resources available are often fragile, expensive, and accessible only during scheduled classes. Drawing on a constructivist, personalized approach to learning, this study investigated students' perceptions of an alternative learning resource: a three-dimensional (3D) printed model used in an active learning task. A human skull was three-dimensionally scanned and used to produce a 3D printed model for each student. Students actively participated in model creation by tracing suture lines and coloring individual orbital bones during a practical class, then keeping the model for future study. Students' perceptions of the 3D orbital model were examined through a questionnaire: the impact the model had on their learning; perceptions of the 3D orbit compared to traditional resources; and utility of having their own personalized model. The 3D orbit was well received by the student cohort. Participants (n = 69) preferred the 3D orbit as a resource for learning orbital bone anatomy compared to traditional learning resources, believing the model helped them to understand and visualize the spatial relationships of the bones, and that it increased their confidence to apply this knowledge. Overall, the participants liked that they co-created the model, could touch and feel it, and that they had access to it whenever they liked. Three-dimensional printing technology has the potential to enable the creation of effective learning resources that are robust, low-cost and readily accessible to students, and should be considered by anyone wishing to incorporate personalized resources to their multimodal teaching repertoire. Anat Sci Educ 12: 518-528.

The Impact of Three‐Dimensional Printed Anatomical Models on First‐Year Student Engagement in a Block Mode Delivery

“…The findings of this study demonstrate not only a high engagement with the learning activity and content, but also appears to have added value to the overall learning experience, through active and deep learning. Furthermore, the focus group findings mirror that of Backhouse et al (2019), who found that a cohort of optometry using their own 3DP skull models to study anatomy strongly resonated with the ownership and personalized aspects of the models. Hence, the findings suggest that the concept of ownership is important in building student engagement and that these concepts may have a downstream effect on both student learning strategies and perceived course educational value.…”

“…Literature also suggests that that the quality and detail of the 3DP model can aid in achieving higher degrees of successful learning outcomes (Kong et al, 2016). More recently, it has been shown that personal 3DP anatomical models can be used effectively to augment both the curriculum and more traditional laboratory‐based learning approaches (Mogali et al, 2018; Smith et al, 2018; Backhouse et al, 2019). Despite the widespread adoption of 3DP anatomical models into medical and surgical education and training (Baskaran et al, 2016; Fasel et al, 2016; Lim, et al, 2016), there is little research that explores the effectiveness of their use in other health education disciplines (Azer and Azer, 2016).…”

Second‐Year Nursing Students’ Retention of Gross Anatomical Knowledge

“…Numerous studies have reported a growing concern over the loss of anatomy knowledge throughout medical programs (Bhangu et al, ; Jurjus et al, ; Doomernik et al, ; Easteal and Perry, ; Norris et al, ) and allied‐health disciplines such as physical therapy (Anderson and Conley, ), kinesiology (Wagner, ), chiropractic (Strkalj et al, ), veterinary science (Wade and Walker, ), physician assistant (Keim Janssen et al, ) speech‐language pathology (Barros et al, ), optometry (Backhouse et al, ), podiatry (Díaz‐Mancha et al, ), and nursing (McVicar et al, , ; Booth et al, ; Alt‐Gehrman, ). These studies suggest that there is great difficulty not only in transferring fundamental anatomy knowledge to theory/clinical application but also a loss of that knowledge over time (Bhangu et al, ; Brunk et al, ).…”

“…Most of the knowledge retention studies cited above were focused on single specific organ systems (Díaz‐Mancha et al, ) or regional gross anatomy (Starkalj et al, ; Jurjus et al, ; Brunk et al, ; Doomernik et al, ) and were focused on either medical (Bhangu et al, ; Finnerty et al, ; Jurjus et al, ; Doomernik et al, ; Easteal and Perry, ; Norris et al, ) or allied health students (Fiebert and Waggoner, ; Strkalj et al, ; Keim Janssen et al, ; Barros et al, ; Backhouse et al, ). However, for nursing education worldwide, retention of anatomy knowledge has not yet been studied as extensively as for medical (Jurjus, et al, ; Doomernik et al, ) and allied‐health students (Wade and Walker, ; Strkalj et al, ; Keim Janssen et al, ; Meyer et al, ; Barros et al, ).…”

“…As learning is a process of memory formation that can be modified through pedagogical approaches (McBride and Drake 2016;Sosa et al, 2018), many authors have examined the impact of different teaching and learning strategies on anatomy education. Techniques such as: repeated testing and retrieval of anatomical knowledge (Logan et al, 2011;Meyer et al, 2015;McBride and Drake, 2016;Dobson et al, 2017;Doomernik et al, 2017), hands-on training (Knudson et al, 2018), reciprocal peer tutoring (Manyama et al, 2016), team-based and kinesthetic learning (Wagner, 2014;Emke et al, 2016;Backhouse et al, 2019), dissection and prosection (Johnson et al, 2012;Montayre and Sparks, 2017), the use of teaching technologies (Parikh et al, 2004;Cui et al, 2016), anatomy models (Holzinger et al, 2009;Johnson et al, 2012), and laboratory training (Attardi et al, 2016;Montayre and Sparks, 2017) have all been evaluated to determine the impact of these strategies on learning of anatomy.…”