USRC: A New Strategy for Adding Digital Images to the Medical School Curriculum

Abstract

Many medical schools use learning management systems (LMSs) to give students access to online lecture notes, assignments, quizzes, and other learning resources. LMSs can also be used to provide access to digital radiology images, potentially improving preclinical teaching in anatomy, physiology, and pathology while also allowing students to develop interpretation skills that are important in clinical practice. However, it is unclear how radiology images can best be stored, imported, and displayed in an LMS. We developed University of Saskatchewan Radiology Courseware (USRC), a new web application that allows course designers to import images into pages linked to BlackBoard Learn, a popular LMS. Page content, including images, annotations, captions, and supporting text, are stored as teaching cases on a MIRC (Medical Imaging Resource Center) server. Course designers create cases in MIRC, and then create a corresponding page in BlackBoard by modifying an HTML template so that it holds the URL of a MIRC case. When a user visits the page in BlackBoard, the page requests content from the MIRC case, reformats the text for display in BlackBoard, and loads an image viewer plug-in that allows students to view and interact with the images stored in the case. The USRC technology can be used to reformat MIRC cases for presentation in any website or in any learning management system that supports custom pages written in HTML with embedded JavaScript.

From chalkboard, slides, and paper to e‐learning: How computing technologies have transformed anatomical sciences education

“…Wright et al (2012) used a learning management system to integrate Web‐based learning with collaborative team exercises using commercially available three‐dimensional anatomical virtual dissection software and anatomical models, in a dissection‐free approach to undergraduate anatomy classes. Pinelle et al () developed University of Saskatchewan Radiology Courseware (UCRS) to allow cased‐based medical imaging to be easily integrated into existing course content of existing LMSes.…”

Interactive radiological anatomy eLearning solution for first year medical students: Development, integration, and impact on learning

“…A search for external solutions at the time revealed no feasible, affordable TELT solution, and the underlying reasons were as follows. Firstly, the content was designed for radiology trainees and was not at an appropriate level for the intended Year 1 medical students (Phillips et al, 2013;Pinelle et al, 2012;Webb et al, 2013). Secondly, the TELT solutions that were relevant to medical students were primarily designed for use in conjunction with cadaveric dissection, which was not part of the Year 1 curriculum at the University of Southampton (Chew et al, 2006;Jacobson et al, 2009;Lufler et al, 2010;Marker et al, 2010;May et al, 2013;Tam et al, 2010).…”

Generation of reusable learning objects from digital medical collections: An analysis based on the MASMDOA framework

“…Moreover, mechanisms for defining the granular level of learning object structures should be included in future versions of Clavy . An additional limitation is the fact that Clavy cannot be considered a learning platform compared to those examples mentioned in section “Literature review” such as USRC 36 or RadEd 37 although it does include features that could help to generate instructional mechanisms such as interactive questionnaires or educational activities linked to multimedia information items. The features provided by Clavy when generating standard specifications are in line with those recommendations for their use in the radiology e-learning context 33 and in medical education in general.…”